Saturday, October 1, 2016

Superstore 2x02 Recap: “Back to Work” (You’re All Garbage) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“Back to Work”
Original Airdate: September 29, 2016

The strike is over and it’s back to work for the employees of Cloud 9. Amy and Jonah are still licking their wounds from their failed standoff with corporate, while Glenn is just happy to have his job back. Unfortunately, Jeff — the district manager that corporate sent — is still lurking about. Glenn is worried that they’re still looking for an excuse to fire him, so he decides he’ll work on his tough-guy persona to prove he’s a good store manager that no one can walk all over.

Jeff assures Glenn that they’re not going to fire him again, and says he’s just here to observe how a normal day at Cloud 9 looks and find areas for improvement. Amy gets annoyed that Jeff thinks they need to improve at all when it’s really corporate that could use some improving.

Hoping to get Jeff out of their hair sooner rather than later, Amy rallies the team to really step up their game today. Unfortunately, things are off to a rough start when Amy discovers the employee who was supposed to be running the deli didn’t show up. She instructs Marcus to man the deli counter and shows him the ropes. Marcus, however, is not the brightest bulb. Within about two seconds of loading the meat slicer, he slices off his thumb. After some screaming and general freaking out, Amy and Marcus wrap the thumb in saran wrap and stick it in a tub of guacamole (to keep it cold, naturally).

They attempt to leave the store with the thumb but run into Glenn and Jeff who have some questions about shift assignments. Amy obviously doesn’t want Jeff to know what happened. She manages to divert Glenn and Jeff’s attention by making up a story about some unruly customers. As Jeff and Glenn go to investigate, Amy and Marcus make a mad dash for the parking lot. Just as they reach the car, they realize they left the thumb in the store.

Meanwhile, Dina is having a hard time getting the employees to respect her after she tried to fire them all and refused to participate in their strike. Jonah takes it upon himself to teach her how to be kind to others, but his lesson doesn’t go as planned. Dina truly doesn’t care what people think of her, and certainly doesn’t care if they like her, which is a concept Jonah cannot wrap his head around.

While Jonah and Dina work on an apology letter for Dina to read to the employees, Amy enlists another employee to get Marcus to the hospital and rallies everyone else to search for the thumb which has completely disappeared.

Unfortunately, Jeff chooses now as the time to hold his own meeting and tell the employees a couple ways they can improve. He also opens up the floor for them to tell him how corporate can improve. Though this is what they’ve all been waiting and hoping for, Amy says they have no complaints and everything’s great so they can get back out and search for the thumb. Jeff’s surprised but pretty pleased that he won’t have to listen to a bunch of complaints.

Before they can search for the thumb, though, Jonah decides this is the best time for Dina to read the apology letter he wrote for her. She gets about halfway through before becoming frustrated by Jonah’s flowery prose and references to dramatic movies she’s never watched. She crumples the apology letter, tells them they’re all garbage, and storms out.

With the meeting officially over, the employees race back out to find the thumb. They search all the guacamole containers they can find as well as other random places in the store, but can’t find it anywhere.

Meanwhile, poor Cheyenne has stopped by for a visit to show them all photos of her baby. Everyone is so distracted by their search for the missing thumb that they don’t have time to talk to her. Cheyenne gives up and grabs a package of diapers and gets in line. With only one cashier left to man the registers while everyone else searches for the thumb, the checkout line is super long. Spying an empty register nearby, Cheyenne decides to just check herself out. Just as she’s about to ring up her purchase, a customer comes over thinking she’s opened up a second register. Soon Cheyenne is ringing up customers, getting yelled at, and crying. Just a typical day at work, except she’s not even on duty.

Meanwhile, the search for the thumb has been a complete failure. Just as the employees are huddled together discussing the issue, Jeff walks up wanting to know what’s going on. They try to cover but then a customer wanders over to let them know he found a thumb in his guacamole.

They race the thumb off to Marcus in the hospital, but Amy’s terrified she’ll be fired now that Jeff’s aware of the situation. Unbeknownst to anyone, Dina confronts Jeff as he’s crafting his incident report. She tells him that if he files the report with corporate, then she’ll have to file her own report stating that an untrained employee was maimed while an inept district manager was on site. Jeff realizes that if she files that report, he will definitely get blamed for the entire incident, and so agrees not to file his report. Problem solved. It seems Dina does have a heart after all.

Laughable Lines:
  • “Actually, I think that cockroach in the light is new.” “Nope. Ernie’s been here longer than me.” 
  • “March 14ths cannot be manufactured. That’s what makes March 14ths beautiful.”
  • “I’m the kind of manager corporate loves. I don’t allow any jiggery-pokery or argle-bargle.”
  • “We have a lot of hungry and angry people.” “Oh, you can just say ‘hangry’ now. It’s a new word. My friend’s cousin made it up.”
  • “I need this thumb for work! Driving! Door knobs!”

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