Anakin's Office, Tuesday
Aug. 22nd, 2023 07:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirderthanthouAnakin pushed past a small mountain of terrifyingly patterned shirts, socks, hats, and novelty aprons on his way to his desk. It had been weeks since he'd made it into his office: as a cat, office paperwork had been pretty far down on his list of priorities.
He sorted the Shenanigan swag into categories of "hideous", "hideous but workable", and "my eyes, my eyes" and then started on the correspondence in his inbox.
Letters from alumni, solicitations from charitable groups he'd never heard of (Orphaned Garden Gnomes of France could not possibly be real), a new school brochure about something called "Fandom University" and a chirpy note from the president of the school board--
He blinked and reread that. It was dated from July, addressed to Zoe, and--
Sithspit.
He reached for the phone and dialed the boss.
Zoe's inbox had reached awful double digits, so she was doing the very important work of scrolling through YouTube videos describing different, but equally "best" ways of making coffee. She hit pause as the phone rang, welcoming a new distraction.
"Hello. What have the students done now?"
There was a slightly awkward pause. "Well. Potentially gotten older, and not in that reunion weekend way," Anakin said. "Are you in your office? I have something for you from the school board that got accidentally routed to my desk."
If she was talking to anyone else, Zoe would have held back the automatic groan that came with hearing the words “school board,” but she figured Anakin would understand. “Yes, I’m here. Let’s see what kind of insanity they’re springing on us now.”
Anakin walked up to Zoe's office, rapped on the door and entered. "Well, the good news is that they don't want to visit," he said, putting the letter and the brochure on the desk. "The bad news is. Well."
Zoe eyed the brochure warily and picked up the letter to scan it. "Exciting opportunity for the school... expand your scholastic offerings... they want to open a university here?" She grabbed the brochure. "Oh, no, my mistake, it's already happening.” Zoe set the papers down and rubbed her eyes. “Remind me that we can’t just shoot all of them?”
"They're probably immortal?" Anakin replied after a moment's thought.
“Ugh, you're probably right, but that doesn't mean I can't fantasize about it,” Zoe said. “All right, we're intelligent people, we're used to getting terrible orders from terrible people, we can figure this out.”
Anakin reread the brochure. "They're arriving next week," he said, noticing the date. "Wonderful. Well, it's probably not a thousand more students?"
This was Anakin trying to be optimistic.
Hopefully, he had enough optimism for both of them.
“If it is, they’re going to need to set up tents, or go live in the hotel.” That got Zoe thinking for a moment. “We should warn Jesse that the incoming folks might look a little different, right?”
Anakin nodded. "Especially because I don't think we can mandate adults to stay on campus."
“I don’t know if they count as adults if they’ve decided to come here,” Zoe replied. She picked up the phone and dialed the town hall number, trying to think about how she could explain this.
Whenever the big red rotary phone on her desk rang, Jesse would jerk up in her seat. She couldn’t help it. Phones rarely meant anything good in her world. She reached over warily to grab it. “Hello?” Shit. Say your name. “Er, Jesse Faden, mayor’s office.”
Zoe put the phone on speaker. “Hi Jesse, it’s Zoe and Anakin over at the school. There’s no emergency.” That seemed important to start with. “But we’ve got a… bit of a weird situation.”
"The school board is expanding our mandate," Anakin added. "We're now going to be offering college classes." Pause. "Starting in September." Another, more annoyed pause. "To new arrivals on the island that the board has already invited."
Taking that "better to ask forgiveness than permission" maxim a little far, in Anakin's opinion.
Oh. Jesse blinked. “... Yeah, they’ve been working on that for a while,” she said. “Didn’t you get the emails? I mean, I assume there were emails. They send me their stuff by snail mail because of the, uh, explosion risk.”
She’d really need to work on that ‘trusting the school board to format their emails properly so they didn’t wind up in spam folders or worse’ issue.
Zoe glanced over at her computer and sighed. “If they sent anything by email, I didn’t see it. We got a brochure, an annoyingly fancy one at that.”
"Their emails go to my spam since their visit here," Anakin said, not sounding remotely sorry. "You weren't here for that, it was a pain. I didn't think they'd reformat the school."
“Yeah, it’s… pretty drastic,” Jesse allowed. She sighed. “I’ve had people working overtime on construction in the warehouse area. Just in case we get flooded by twenty-somethings looking for something they can Boho.”
“And I was just starting to get the hang of teenagers,” Zoe replied. “We can make sure the school side of everything works.” She was tempted to say this wasn't the worst thing the school board had thrown at them, but that was just tempting fate.
"It could be worse," Anakin added because he liked to walk full-on into bad choices and fate tempting.
“I will pay you money never to say that again,” Jesse said.
[[ preplayed with the awesomesith_happened and bigdamnprincipal. establishy. ]]
He sorted the Shenanigan swag into categories of "hideous", "hideous but workable", and "my eyes, my eyes" and then started on the correspondence in his inbox.
Letters from alumni, solicitations from charitable groups he'd never heard of (Orphaned Garden Gnomes of France could not possibly be real), a new school brochure about something called "Fandom University" and a chirpy note from the president of the school board--
He blinked and reread that. It was dated from July, addressed to Zoe, and--
Sithspit.
He reached for the phone and dialed the boss.
Zoe's inbox had reached awful double digits, so she was doing the very important work of scrolling through YouTube videos describing different, but equally "best" ways of making coffee. She hit pause as the phone rang, welcoming a new distraction.
"Hello. What have the students done now?"
There was a slightly awkward pause. "Well. Potentially gotten older, and not in that reunion weekend way," Anakin said. "Are you in your office? I have something for you from the school board that got accidentally routed to my desk."
If she was talking to anyone else, Zoe would have held back the automatic groan that came with hearing the words “school board,” but she figured Anakin would understand. “Yes, I’m here. Let’s see what kind of insanity they’re springing on us now.”
Anakin walked up to Zoe's office, rapped on the door and entered. "Well, the good news is that they don't want to visit," he said, putting the letter and the brochure on the desk. "The bad news is. Well."
Zoe eyed the brochure warily and picked up the letter to scan it. "Exciting opportunity for the school... expand your scholastic offerings... they want to open a university here?" She grabbed the brochure. "Oh, no, my mistake, it's already happening.” Zoe set the papers down and rubbed her eyes. “Remind me that we can’t just shoot all of them?”
"They're probably immortal?" Anakin replied after a moment's thought.
“Ugh, you're probably right, but that doesn't mean I can't fantasize about it,” Zoe said. “All right, we're intelligent people, we're used to getting terrible orders from terrible people, we can figure this out.”
Anakin reread the brochure. "They're arriving next week," he said, noticing the date. "Wonderful. Well, it's probably not a thousand more students?"
This was Anakin trying to be optimistic.
Hopefully, he had enough optimism for both of them.
“If it is, they’re going to need to set up tents, or go live in the hotel.” That got Zoe thinking for a moment. “We should warn Jesse that the incoming folks might look a little different, right?”
Anakin nodded. "Especially because I don't think we can mandate adults to stay on campus."
“I don’t know if they count as adults if they’ve decided to come here,” Zoe replied. She picked up the phone and dialed the town hall number, trying to think about how she could explain this.
Whenever the big red rotary phone on her desk rang, Jesse would jerk up in her seat. She couldn’t help it. Phones rarely meant anything good in her world. She reached over warily to grab it. “Hello?” Shit. Say your name. “Er, Jesse Faden, mayor’s office.”
Zoe put the phone on speaker. “Hi Jesse, it’s Zoe and Anakin over at the school. There’s no emergency.” That seemed important to start with. “But we’ve got a… bit of a weird situation.”
"The school board is expanding our mandate," Anakin added. "We're now going to be offering college classes." Pause. "Starting in September." Another, more annoyed pause. "To new arrivals on the island that the board has already invited."
Taking that "better to ask forgiveness than permission" maxim a little far, in Anakin's opinion.
Oh. Jesse blinked. “... Yeah, they’ve been working on that for a while,” she said. “Didn’t you get the emails? I mean, I assume there were emails. They send me their stuff by snail mail because of the, uh, explosion risk.”
She’d really need to work on that ‘trusting the school board to format their emails properly so they didn’t wind up in spam folders or worse’ issue.
Zoe glanced over at her computer and sighed. “If they sent anything by email, I didn’t see it. We got a brochure, an annoyingly fancy one at that.”
"Their emails go to my spam since their visit here," Anakin said, not sounding remotely sorry. "You weren't here for that, it was a pain. I didn't think they'd reformat the school."
“Yeah, it’s… pretty drastic,” Jesse allowed. She sighed. “I’ve had people working overtime on construction in the warehouse area. Just in case we get flooded by twenty-somethings looking for something they can Boho.”
“And I was just starting to get the hang of teenagers,” Zoe replied. “We can make sure the school side of everything works.” She was tempted to say this wasn't the worst thing the school board had thrown at them, but that was just tempting fate.
"It could be worse," Anakin added because he liked to walk full-on into bad choices and fate tempting.
“I will pay you money never to say that again,” Jesse said.
[[ preplayed with the awesome
sith_happened and bigdamnprincipal. establishy. ]]
