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“I’ll never financially recover from this, I’m ruined!” Dean Pelton exclaimed as if timed to perfection, the moment Frankie set foot inside his office door.
Dean Pelton looked disheveled and desperate from behind his desk, like he’d been recently crying. It was just the thing Frankie had no time for, amidst all the other messes she had to clean up around campus. Though things ran decidedly smoother now than when she had first arrived, trouble rarely seemed far away at Greendale Community College. And it appeared to have shown its face once more.
Frankie sighed. “Dean.” He did not look at her. “Dean. Craig. Look at me.”
Dean Pelton looked at Frankie, his eyes tear-stained behind his glasses.
“What have you done?” Frankie asked him point-blank.
“Nothing…”
“It’s obviously not nothing. Otherwise, you would not have, and rather dramatically I might add, told me that you will never financially recover, and that you are ruined. So tell me what you’ve done.”
“No!”
“Dean, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on. Have you fallen for another guerrilla marketing scheme? Is this another Honda-situation, where I can expect to find your office, or some other room in this school to be filled with a thousand different merchandise items of some brand or other in a day or two?”
“I don’t know!” Dean Pelton loudly exclaimed, appearing to be on the verge of crying.
Frankie was grateful to have experience with a mentally challenged sister. Whenever her sister had accidentally destroyed something while Frankie was away at work, Frankie would, without fail, find her sulking and angry once back home. Prying the truth out of her was at times more challenging than removing a tooth. Or at least that’s what she believed would be an apt comparison. Personally, Frankie had never had difficulty with extracting any teeth, as her wisdom teeth had been removed without complication, and her other teeth were in pristine condition. She made sure to brush, flush, and floss twice a day, without fail.
The Dean was much like her sister in some regards. Much like her sister, the Dean would sulk and lash out in anger whenever he had done something wrong. Often it wasn’t particularly difficult to tell when he’d done something wrong, as he was an astoundingly poor actor. Frankie didn’t remember the names of any actors, but she presumed that the Dean would be comparable to an actor Abed would have monologued about for two minutes and twenty seconds just to explain how incomprehensibly poor they were compared to someone he liked. The good part of which was that the Dean would often feel guilty whenever he’d done something he knew was wrong. That was more than some, at least.
“Craig, it is obvious that you know what you have done. Have you used school funds to do whatever it is you have done?”
“What? No! I would never!”
Frankie stared at him blankly. She knew well that he absolutely would and had in the past. Multiple times. She had learned quickly that Dean Pelton had spending habits best described as inadvisable.
“Craig,” Frankie began carefully, giving him a tight-lipped smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We have been over this before, both with regards to the VR-headset, and the frankly obscene amount of Honda-merchandise you bought. So have you, or have you not used school funds to purchase something inadvisable?”
Craig tilted his head, looking up as if to think, then at Frankie. “Can you define inadvisable for me?”
Frankie stared at him once more. “Did you or did you not use school funds?”
Craig sighed. “No, I used my own money.”
“Good. Then this is not my concern. If there’s nothing more, I would like to discuss the need to replace a bathroom stall door in the men’s bathroom of the cafeteria building. It has fallen off the hinges. We have a witness claiming it was done by a female student, and on purpose.”
Craig stared sadly at her.
“You weren’t paying attention to any of that, were you?” Frankie asked.
“I’m in trouble, Frankie. I’m in deep, deep trouble. I used everything I got this month, Frankie.”
“What do you mean you’ve used everything?”
“EVERYTHING!” Craig loudly exclaimed. “I used everything, Frankie. My whole wage for the month!”
“Craig, we were paid three days ago. How could you have spent all of it already?”
“I found this website…”
“Oh god…” Frankie muttered to herself.
“It had all of these things. They were so cool, Frankie. They had model trains, locomotives, tracks, train stations, everything you could ever imagine wanting!”
Frankie had never wanted model trains. She wanted trains, simply for the practicality of travel offered across long distances without the need for a car, but she felt no need to own or look at model trains. Where Craig’s newfound love for model trains came from, she did not truly know nor care. “You spent your entire months wages on model trains.”
“I didn’t mean to! They were just so nice! But now I can’t pay rent, I’ll run out of food! I declare bankruptcy!”
Frankie decided to ignore the absurdity of declaring bankruptcy out loud. “Craig,” Frankie said. “Have you model trains arrived?”
Craig shook his head. “No. They’re waiting for me at the post office.”
“Good. You’ll return it. Unopened. All of it. And you’ll ask for your money back. I’ll help cover return shipping this one time. Until you get your money back, I’ll ask the wage office to pay you in advance for next month. That means you’ll need to save whatever you get, even after you get your money back. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Craig nodded weakly.
“Good. I’ll call up the wage office and sort that out. Just sit there and speak when I say so, okay?” Frankie looked at Craig, who nodded. “After that, we’ll go to the post office and return your model trains. Meanwhile, you’ll find the website you ordered it from and ask for a refund. We’ll figure this out.”
“Okay,” Craig said, a little weakly. He paused for a moment while Frankie sat down and tried to find the number she needed on her phone. “You’re the best, Frankie. I’m so glad we have you.”
Frankie smiled softly, through pursed lips. “I’m glad to be here, Craig. I can’t say it’s what I expected when I was hired, but I am glad to be here. Now, tomorrow we’re going to talk about impulse purchases.”