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Portalocity Office | 13 Griffin Way | Monday

Sam had been expecting a lot of different things from her new job at Portalocity, but the first thing to take her by surprise was the completely disastrous state of the office. It wasn't just the inch-thick layer of dust on everything, which, among other things, was so deeply wedged into the front door lock that it had taken quite a bit of fiddling with the key to get it open. It also wasn't just the balled-up sheets of paper that had somehow found their way inside reading PORTALOCITY SUCKS and FIRE tHE FUCKING GNOME! Even the old memos and printouts that someone had left on the desk over a year ago weren't the worst of it.

No, what looked like the worst thing came about as soon as Sam got settled at the desk and took a look at her new work email on her omni-tool. Customer service complaints were pouring in by the second, filling up so much of her inbox that it took Sam a few moments to notice that she actually needed to set up a portal today, too. In the park. That went to dozens of different dimensions. She knew right away that it would take quite a bit of time to even find the email with instructions on how to do that, with all of the complaints she was getting, so instead of following the agenda she'd written up ahead of time for the day, she got to work on that at once.

Later, she tore herself away from answering emails for just long enough to make a sign by the front:

WELCOME TO PORTALOCITY
Make your travel arrangements here!
Now hiring.

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If you'd like to mod setting up a portal for an upcoming trip, feel free to do so!

And tear her away from the emails. Oh god, the emails.

Emily wandered in, the newly open store making her curious. She didn't need a job, but hey, it might turn out to be entertaining or something.

"Hello?"

The current email Sam was reading was a horrifying, in-depth account of someone whose portal had sent her to the very edge of a bridge while she was holding a baby stroller, so she was a bit wide-eyed when she looked away.

"Hello there," she greeted Emily. "Is there something I can help you with?"

That sounded like the kind of mail Emily would be thrilled to read.

"Well, I didn't know we had this place, so I was curious," Emily said with a shrug. Managing portals sounded way too cool to her.

"Well, welcome to Portalocity," Sam said in her best 'welcoming door greeter' voice. "Here you can make travel arrangements for nearly any upcoming trips you might have. We provide... relatively safe service to over one billion universes."

Edited 2013-04-08 15:05 (UTC)

"That's a lot of places. Are you looking for a particular kind of employee?" Emily went right to the point, since she might as well figure how this was going to work.

Edited 2013-04-08 15:06 (UTC)

"I'm the branch manager," Sam replied. "Among other things. This location doesn't have much of a staff yet. Is there something I can help you with?"

Edited 2013-04-08 15:08 (UTC)

Emily smiled lightly. "That's why I'm asking. I'm not sure if I'm, well, qualified to even try to get a job here."

"Well, what sort of work experience do you have?" Sam wondered. "Do you have a resumé?"

"Not...really?" Oh, that was a great start. "I'm done some filing jobs, and a good deal of organizing stuff. Otherwise I'm still a high school student." Never mind she was eighteen already, ugh.

Okay, well, Sam wasn't sure how much better she could really do in this town. It seemed to be a lot of teenagers who were likely in the same situation as Emily.

"How are your customer service skills?" she inquired. "Customer service is something that might require a certain amount of finesse at Portalocity."

Ahahaha. Yeah.

Oh, Emily wouldn't say the rest of the students were in her exact situation.

"I'm very good at finesse," Emily said easily. It was an important part of lying everyone in a consistent basis.

Edited 2013-04-08 15:46 (UTC)

It wasn't the most comprehensive sell Sam had ever heard, but sure. What else was a good question to ask...? "So," she said, "suppose a customer calls and claims that their portal transported them somewhere unsafe. How would you respond?"

"Well, I would ask them to either find a safe place to get them transported back, assuming that's possible, or that they don't move from where they are, and then work on getting them somewhere safe," Emily explained slowly. She had no idea how the portals worked, so it was all improvisation.

"Depending on just how unsafe we're talking about I might or might not take the time to actually listen to the customer, depending on how fast can I pull this person away from danger."

Wow, this was difficult.

Edited 2013-04-08 16:09 (UTC)

"Right," Sam said, nodding along. That was pretty solid damage control in that she planned on moving the person away from the dangerous situation, but left alone, that approach was likely to still lead to the person bad-mouthing the company and never using their portals again. Fairly so, even. "And in the aftermath, as far as preserving customer relations?"

"Depending on the frequency of the customer I would probably contact you to give this person a number of free portals, or maybe a free trip to some cool place, I guess," Emily said, now fully into the scenario. She had been taught how to keep people's expectations surpassed all the time, after all.

"Well, I would need to be sure of what I can offer and what I can't, but if it's a matter of initiative...then yeah."

Sam nodded. "Not bad," she settled on. "How do you feel about manning the desk one day a week, ah...?"

That was a pause for Emily's name.

"Emily. Emily Thorne, and I think I would like that," Emily said. Well that had hardly hurt.

"Emily Thorne," Sam repeated to herself, mostly so she'd remember it. "Is there a particular day you'd prefer? I'm planning to be here on Thursdays for certain, but other than that..."

"I don't have classes on Tuesdays," Emily offered.

"Tuesdays it is," Sam decided. "The hours will be your typical nine-to-five. If you can make it in a little before nine this next week, I can meet you out front and give you a key and a tutorial. Hopefully by then I'll know a bit more about what to expect."

"Okay, sure. Sounds reasonable," Emily said. "So not tomorrow right? I don't want to show up and find the place closed, or not come and be a flake in my first day."

Was her OCD showing?

Sam glanced around the office. It still required quite a bit of work before she was willing to subject Emily to it. Not to mention that the worst of the damage control was probably left in Sam's own hands for now. "Not tomorrow," she confirmed. "The sixteenth, I believe. Does that work?"

Emily nodded. "Sure, I'll be here then." She wasn't all that eager to start, but she had to keep some consistence, she thought; too much chaos had been messing with her performance as of late.

"Thanks a lot, by the way. Even if a few weeks from now I'm sitting here wishing time passed faster."

"Not a problem," Sam replied. "It'll be nice to have the extra hands on deck, Emily. Did you have any questions for now?" She paused. "...That I'll know how to answer?"

Emily turned around the store. "So, we arrange portals for the people of Fandom and...whoever else is out there travelling between worlds, right? And we just..." She finished turning and faced Sam again. "Uh, use a computer? I'm guessing the software is there, right? I don't know if I'm making this sound simpler than it is, I mean, I only know two worlds, and one it's my own."

"That's right," Sam agreed. Based on her conversations with Priestly and Jono, she'd been left with the impression that everyone in this timestream had heard of Portalocity, but of course there was a fallacy to that argument. "I'll know more about exactly how the software works by the next time you come by, but there's some sort of program that you'll be using, yes."

The fun thing was that half the people that arrived to Fandom didn't realize the whole Portalocity deal until they arrived, and even then.

"Okay, sounds good. I'll get here earlier then," she said, bouncing a bit out of actual, real, excitement. "So I guess that's all right? I could stick around for a little while and...dust the place, if you want."

There were too many au kids out there.

Sam had to appreciate Emily's enthusiasm. She smiled. "That's all right, but I appreciate the offer," she said. "I might need the place to be rather empty for a while so I can finish reading these emails and... well, screaming."

That was hyperbole, but not by much.

Emily chuckled. "By all means, scream away. I guess I'll see you soon...um...you actually didn't tell my your name."

Funny that.

Edited 2013-04-08 20:05 (UTC)

"Oh! Right." Sam knew she'd forgotten something. "Specialist Samantha Traynor. Just call me Sam, if you'd like."

"Specialist?" She even put it before her name. "But yeah, Sam is alright. Unless you want me to call you boss. Um, ma'am."

Well, she was military. Emily was just lucky that Sam didn't accumulate titles like Kaidan did. "Sam will be fine," she assured Emily.

Emily made a mental note to ask Sam about that title later. "Alright then. Well, see ya I guess."

My bb!

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Portalocity Office | 13 Griffin Way | Monday

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OOC