fh_office

"Hooray, and up she rises--"

"That was last week." Ida gave Head of Accounting a whack across the dome. "Today, reality television is the in thing! Keep up!"

Head of Accounting squinted at her. "...Snooki?"

"Sigh."

That Monday, the staffers returned to the office. They had a built-in sense of when Fandom insanity ended, and, okay, they'd been thrown off a little by the powdered sugar snow, but it was probably a lot better than the past few weeks had been.

"What did we miss?" Ida chirped cheerfully as she stepped in.

Bob turned around.

"Oh no! Our computers!"

"My paperwork is gone," Ida complained. "I'd just taken it home to do some late-night checkups, but when I came back from the bathroom, it just fwoosh-- it was gone! Not a trace!"

The elk nodded in a way she interpreted as understanding.

"I'm telling you, these kids on the radio, they're on to something," she continued. "Why, I haven't been able to find my keys in ages, either! And one of my snowglobes! And this morning, I didn't find my cat for at least another hour after I fed her!"

The elk nodded again. Or possibly it bobbed its head down to snack on some left-over paperwork. One of those things.

Most of the office staff was out on leadership training today, so the skeleton crew was taking care of office business today.

They rattled a little, but it turned out okay.

Well, for the first few hours, anyway. Then the gremlins came out of the woodwork. But that's another story.

"WHIPPED CREAM ALERT!"

Those turned out to be fateful words. The entire accounting office had been flooded with large quantities of whipped cream. Head of Accounting bobbed on top of it, screaming bloody murder, but no one could reach him to save him.

"Oh, no," Ida whimpered. "This is as bad as the syrup crisis of '24!"

No one had any idea what she was talking about, but they did get out the shovels.

Why did guests always require so much paperwork? They were up to their necks in it. Ida groaned, hammering her face into a stack of 'terrified squirrel report' forms that she'd have to fill in and submit to the national squirrel union.

"Why?" she asked. "Why. Why."

"Shut up and pass me the approval stamp," Head of Accounting growled. "I am so suing this school some day."

"My stomach hurts," Ida complained from the floor. "Huuuuurts. Huuuuuuuuuurts. Huuuuuurts."

"We told you not to eat foreign snack food," said Head of Accounting, floating merrily above his desk. "How can you trust anything called 'flames'?"

"I just thought it was spicy!"

"We were in a volcano!"

"Still, it's just rude!"

Sufficient to say, nobody in the office was going to be able to get to work today. Even the melk-elkoose wound up braying about it by the middle of the day.

"More caffeine," Ida cried, weakly. She had her head stuck in the trash can and her hands folded over her head. "Mooooore caffeeeeeeeeine."

There wasn't a man, woman or moose in the office who really wanted to know what was going on there. But they did, patiently, all leave a mug of coffee sitting on her desk. Not for her own well-being, but just so she'd shut up.

She drank it all anyway.

"Someone get me a mop," Ida called.

It had been a week, and people kept spilling black and white all over her nice floor.

"I do not approve!" she shouted. "WHO DID THIS?"

The moose had the grace to look guilty.

"Why is the moose on the roof?"

"I don't know."

"Why is the elk in the basement?"

"I don't know."

"Why is the melk-elkoose--"

"LOOK, I DON'T KNOW, AND IT IS REALLY FRICKING COLD, TURN UP THE HEATING ALREADY."

"You really need to do something about this anger management problem of yours..."