Work Text:
Hiring Manager Vs School.
Set in Hive 5.4
The office of Principal Helena Blackwell had seen tenser situations. Winslow was a notable school, though the phrase ‘infamous’ might have been more apt. The principal’s office had seen a lot of troubled teens come and go through it. Some of those troubled teens had come with troubled parents, for that matter.
At times, the principal office felt like it had more in common with a pressure cooker than it did a place of education. A lesser woman might believe that teenagers, with their mass of conflicting hormones and social drama, would be the irrational ones in any situation, but Blackwell at this point had long learned that it’s the parents, who were supposed to be mature and rational, who were the ones most likely to explode.
Still, hopefully this meeting at least would be quick. With a weathered and judgmental eye, she surveyed the father and daughter who seemed determined to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Blackwell was well and truly done with this whole thing. Blackwell had seen it before: a disadvantaged child from a troubled home acting out against what she perceived to be some sort of unfair treatment of more socially adjusted peers. At one point, many years ago before she had become truly jaded by dealing with the educational system in a simulated warzone like Brockton Bay, Blackwell might have felt bad for the girl.
Now though, Blackwell had to worry more about gang clashes, drug dealing, and weapon carrying in her hallways. She just didn’t have time to worry about some poor widdle girl that had to deal with some harsh language and some mild pushes that didn’t involve deadly weapons.
Young Miss Taylor Hebert had just finished bringing out her journal and emails, and delivered an impassioned speech about the ‘harassment’ she had endured. It was all very dramatic, and Blackwell wished the young girl put some of the passion to her flagging schoolwork. However, none of the supposed offenses were provable, and thus, actionable.
A point that one of the parents, Mr. Alan Barnes, whom Blackwell knew to be a lawyer of good repute, was making right at this moment.
“Abuse is a strong word,” the redheaded man was saying, his tone confident and dismissive. “After all you haven’t proven…”
“Shut up, Alan. This isn’t a courtroom. Even if it were, a lie that obvious would have gotten you thrown out.”
The room paused, as Mr. Daniel Hebert spoke up for the first time this meeting. He was an unimpressive man, tall and mostly thin with a bit of a gut, balding and with a weak chin. Blackwell didn’t want to be the one who went there, but it was her experience that problem students came from problem households. If she recalled correctly, the other man was a dock worker, what amounted to a glorified title for ‘day laborer’. It was the sort of position that drop outs and wash outs tended to drift to.
“Lie?” Alan blustered sitting up in his chair. “I see slander runs in the family tree.”
The other man adjusted his glasses, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Daniel asked, his tone low and sharp as he did so.
“I mean that as a dock worker, you might be able to get away with making any baseless claim you might like,” Alan continued, “but as a lawyer, I am held to a higher standard. I’ll thank you for keeping baseless accusations to yourself in the future.”
Daniel adjusted his glasses again, quietly regarding the other man with narrowed eyes before he spoke in a measured tone.
“Eighteen years we’ve known each other, Alan. Eighteen. And right now, despite how long we used to be friends, I think you’ve honestly forgotten what my job is.”
Blackwell suppressed a sigh in anticipation of some dreary speech about how many leg breakers or tough guys the man knew, or how many fights he ended. Well, if he tried anything here, it would at least bring this tedious meeting to an early ending when she pepper sprayed him.
“Yes, I am with the Dock Worker’s Union,” Daniel continued. “As the head of hiring. I might not be a lawyer, but I’m the next best thing: I’m HR.”
Blackwell froze.
‘Oh shit,’ she swore to herself. The first rule you learned in any profession was never but never screw with HR.
“And yes, the years have been tough for the DWU,” he continued in the same slow pace. “We’ve all had to pitch in, help with roles and jobs outside of our normal roles. Over the years I’ve had to do my fair share in the department: claims investigations, workforce training, involuntary separations, and liability analysis.”
‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,’ Blackwell chanted in her own head.
Across from her, Daniel reached down and pulled out his own copy of the stack of papers his daughter had provided, though slightly different in that it was studded with a veritable forest of colored page tabs. Taylor actually seemed surprised at the reveal. Even Alan began to look a bit nervous at it.
“First of all, your lie about there being no proof,” Daniel continued, thumbing through the tabbed pages and pulling away about a third of a sheaf before setting aside the rest. “I believe we were discussing the emails earlier?”
“Well, yes,” Mrs. Knott nodded again, still thumbing through the collection that had been provided her earlier. “But like we said, most are just throwaway accounts, and there’s no proof of who was using them…”
“Which is irrelevant at the moment,” Daniel cut her off, firmly but politely. “What these do establish is proof of a prolonged hostile work environment. In addition, documented proof of suicidal encouragement, attacks on protected classes, not to mention the prolonged sexual harassment…”
“Sexual harassment?!” Sophia snapped, half launching herself from her seat, before her caseworker put her hand on the younger girl’s shoulder to restrain her. “What the hell, like anyone would even want to touch that worm!”
“Sexual harassment covers unwelcome and unwanted sexual remarks in addition to advancements,” Daniel advised, thumbing through the tabbed emails, finally settling on one of numerous blue tabs. “Please find the email received from the account of ‘[email protected]’, on September the twenty-eighth.”
“Umm,” Mrs. Knott hemmed, flipping awkwardly through the stack of pages. When she finally found the specific page she squinted slightly, reading through it. After a moment she blanched. “Oh dear…”
“To quote,” Daniel began, tone cold. “’Hey, worm. I hope you get raped by a dog. Though it wouldn’t actually be rape, seeing as you know you’d like it, like the bitch you are.’”
At Sophia’s side, her caseworker frowned, her eye twitching slightly. Mrs. Clement gasped, shocked, and Mr. Clement frowned. Alan cleared his throat
“You can’t prove that’s me,” Sophia declared sullenly. “It’s like you said, someone could have done that while I was looking away from my computer.”
“It’s interesting,” Daniel pointed out, drumming his fingers, “how you just called my daughter a worm no less than five minutes ago.”
“Proves nothing,” the girl insisted, scowling.
“It only takes one instance to count as harassment,” Daniel continued, flipping to another blue tab, “but as you can see from the emails, it was not a single incident. I’ve indexed the emails, and these blue tabs indicate where comments on my daughter’s appearance were made, or where sexual activity was indicated. As you can see,” his finger flipped through the large collection of blue tabs, “a history is clearly indicated here.”
“While this is crass, and in poor taste,” Alan cut in, giving Sophia a quick look, “I fail to see how this is in any way proof that anyone in this room is responsible for these emails.”
“It doesn’t matter who’s responsible for them,” Daniel cut him off. He tapped the stack. “The very fact that these emails exist is proof that SOMEONE is harassing my daughter.”
“We’ve already decided that just because an email may be assigned to… someone,” Mrs. Knott cleared her throat and did not look at Sophia, “doesn’t mean that they themselves were using it…”
“No, I believe that you decided that arbitrarily,” Daniel cut her off. “I believe any reasonable individual not scrambling for plausible deniability would accept that an email belonging to a person is used by that person. But even if we accept the implausible, it doesn’t change the fact that you are acknowledging that someone ELSE was using it, hence, the implied acceptance that SOMEONE is harassing my daughter.”
“Well, yes,” Blackwell suppressed a grimace. “While I don’t believe anyone can deny that specifically, with no way to prove who’s using the account, we have to consider that anyone could be. Even up to an including the chance that it is Taylor herself who…”
“I’ll stop you right there,” Daniel cut her off, adjusting his glasses with a scowl. “As a favor: victim blaming is something we see quite often in HR, and to be frank it’s one of the prime warning signs we look for in determining potential guilt. You’re already disadvantaged enough that I don’t think I need any more ammunition.”
“Disadvantaged?” Alan grumbled. “Daniel, I’ve heard a lot of tripe in my time at court, but can you even hear yourself right now? Just because you’ve watched a few crime dramas doesn’t make you an expert at criminal investigations.”
“No, but having overseen dozens of missing merchandise reviews and employee background searches comes close,” Daniel snapped back. “And I’m pleased you’re acknowledging the criminal nature of these events. It sets a good precedence and makes sure we’re all on the same page.”
“Putting words into my mouth doesn’t mean I said it,” Alan immediately backtracked.
“Agreed,” Blackwell jumped in, hoping to regain the initiative. “Mr. Hebert, I think we can all agree that tempers are volatile right now. No matter how the situation appears, I can assure you that we have investigated all reports and incidents, and we have…”
“Ah yes,” Daniel cut her off, immediately flipping to another color of tabs, this time not in the email pile but in the greater list of Taylor’s journal. “Investigations. Like, say, here, on February the twenty third. Let’s see… ‘Was pushed down the stairs by Sophia at lunch. Homework was stolen by Julia and Madison. When Mr. Gladly asked for homework, I told them it was stolen and who stole it. Julia and Madison claimed I was lying. I was warned not to lie and received no credit. Julia turned my homework in as her own.’”
“Mr. Hebert, as a parent I’m sure that this is distressing, as a teacher we have limited resources to work with,” Gladly cut in, smiling in what he most likely thought to be a disarming fashion. “We teachers have a limited time and resources when it comes to investigating claims. I’m certain it might not feel like much, but we do our best with what we have.”
“I see. Well, it’s exceedingly lucky for you are a teacher, and not a police officer,” Daniel told him bluntly. “Because if a police officer investigated a mugging, and the victim was able to identify by face and name two of the muggers, if the police officer then interviewed the two and they both alibied each other and the police officer accepted their word without question, then that police officer would be quickly fired.”
“That’s not fair,” Gladly quickly protested. “I’m not certain what exactly you would think would be adequate, but…”
“I think the bare minimum of adequacy would be the questioning of students who were present and NOT explicitly accused of perpetuating the attack being investigated,” Daniel snapped at him, before he took a deep breath and apparently mastered his fraying temper. “These emails, for instance. Instead of immediately throwing your hands in the air and declaring that it’s ‘just too hard so we don’t want to do our jobs’, a quick review of the times of the emails should be enough to determine if they happened in school hours. That combined with attendance records alone would be enough to verify when my daughter was in class away from computers, which would have let you prevent your imbecilic attempt to implicate her in the emails. I concede that the throwaway accounts would be difficult to research with just the school’s resources, but the Winslow accounts can also be checked to those attendance records, and suddenly instead of your stance of ‘it could be anyone’ you would have a list of twenty to thirty students. I don’t think it would be too hard to go from there, now would it?”
“Surely you can’t expect the entire school to grind to halt for one student,” Alan interjected before Blackwell could speak up.
“Surely I can expect the teachers at a school to do their damn jobs,” Daniel snapped back. “Mr. Gladly, for instance, has already admitted that he has witnessed an attack on my daughter and did nothing to stop it…”
“And I already said it was my belief that Taylor wanted to handle the situation on her own,” Gladly immediately reasserted himself.
“And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but why the hell should my daughter’s supposed wishes matter in this instance?” Daniel immediately declared. The incongruity of the statement was enough to briefly pause the rest of the room as he continued. “I don’t know how you do things here, but in the DWU if a supervisor sees harassment taking place, it is their immediate responsibility to report it, regardless of if the victim wants them to or not. Setting aside the possibility that the victim is being threatened into not pursuing any action, troubling behavior needs to be stopped immediately, otherwise it has a chance of escalating and causing liability. LIKE IT DID HERE.”
“Mr. Hebert, please keep your voice down,” Blackwell moved to cut the other man off as his tone raised. “I will not have any shouting or violence in my office.”
Daniel grimaced, and closed his eyes, visibly calming himself down. At his side, Taylor looked impressed, and patted his leg in encouragement.
“I think we can all agree that this topic has everyone’s temper’s running high,” she continued, glancing around the room to judge the atmosphere.
The Clements looked grim, and their daughter looked like she was going to faint. Blackwell could reliably predict that regardless of how the school handled this investigation, the Clements had made their own decision about their daughter’s guilt, and would be taking their own steps to address it.
Hess’ caseworker was frowning, and was giving the copy of the journal and emails a measuring look. Blackwell was fairly certain that when she left after the meeting a copy of the notes would be going immediately to the PRT for review.
The Barnes, on the other hand, didn’t show even the chance of backing down. Alan had his chin set mulishly, and Emma was smirking innocently at the Heberts.
Again suppressing a grimace, Blackwell decided to push the meeting forward.
“Again, while I have no doubt you have concerns about what has happened, we need to decide about how we proceed going forward,” she reaffirmed. “Taylor has already stated she wants a transfer, and we’ve already explained why that is off the table. So let me ask you, how is it that you want this situation resolved?”
Daniel was quiet for a moment, before he opened his eyes, his temper back in control. He adjusted his glasses again.
“I don’t really think that’s the question that you should be asking, Principal Blackwell,” he finally declared. “I think the question should be, ‘How do YOU want this situation resolved’.”
“I don’t follow,” she frowned, narrowing her eyes at the other man.
“Let me start with this,” he leaned back. “Forty thousand dollars.”
“And now you’re resorting to extortion!?” Alan snapped leaning forward confrontationally. “Is that how low you’re willing to sink?”
“No,” Daniel shook his head. “That’s not what I’m asking for. That’s how much the school board has ALREADY PAID. Forty thousand dollars. That’s a new car, maybe two. That’s a third of a mortgage. That’s,” he nearly growled, “a medical bill for an emergency room visit, as well as a week of inpatient psychiatric treatment.”
“Mr. Hebert,” Blackwell began, but he cut her off immediately.
“At least from our view. From the view of the school board, forty thousand is five or six renovation projects that will have to be put off. That’s nearly an annual salary for a teacher that they can’t hire now. That’s one full percent of the operating budget for the school for the year.”
“That,” Blackwell ground out, scowling, “is also the amount that was provided with the agreement that the school would be indemnified, and no further lawsuit could be pursued.”
“No longer be pursued,” Daniel rebutted, “so long as the school prevented any further attacks.”
With a quick motion, he found one particular tab, and separated the file neatly.
“That accounts for these,” he announced, setting them aside. “But not for these.”
Nearly a third of the stack remained.
“I’ve reviewed these all, and classified them,” he declared, touching the various colored tabs. “This color is for hostile workplace behavior. This color for verbal harassment. This color for assault. This color for illegal detainment…”
“The locker is definitely covered by the previous settlement,” Blackwell protested. Daniel gave her a hard smile.
“One of the most important things they teach you when they train you for workplace theft investigations is that you can never prevent the interviewee from leaving the room. No matter how much proof or evidence you might have, even so much as standing in the doorway can count as illegal detainment, and is grounds for a law suit. The only people legally allowed to stop someone are the police. That’s why they call it an an ‘arrest’.
“So yes,” he continued flipping to the tabbed page, “someone standing in a doorway so that they can keep my daughter in a classroom to abuse her, or surrounding her so she cannot move from her locker without pushing past them, or stealing her backpack and holding it hostage to her continued presence all count as illegal detainment of my daughter. Especially when the last event was witnessed by a teacher.”
He turned a glare at Gladly, who had a very uneasy look on his face.
“Now,” Daniel continued, sitting back in his chair and drumming his fingers slowly on the stack of papers in front of him. “I want to be clear: this is a not a threat. This is me asking a question. The question is, ‘what do you think would happen if I were to sue the school district with all of this?’”
“I think you would be drowned in legal fees to the point where you’re out of your house if you tried it. I think that the whole process would take years, and by the end of it you would be destitute,” Alan snapped immediately. Blackwell grimaced, though she agreed with the lawyer’s point.
“Shut up, Alan,” Daniel snapped back. “You’re a divorce lawyer: a glorified contract negotiator and reverse-marriage counselor. Your whole career is based around speeding up dissolving marriages so you can try to dodge pre-nupts for profit.”
Blackwell was honestly impressed by the comeback, though Alan looked as though he had been physically struck, and even Emma seemed affronted by the attack on her father’s career.
“Despite that, I’m sure you’ve worked with enough real lawyers in the past to know that if a client has a good enough case a litigation lawyer might waive their fees upfront and then take them out of the settlement,” Daniel continued. “And, hypothetically, if I had already shopped this case around I might, hypothetically, have already gotten three offers for representation.”
Blackwell took a deep breath. She suspected that this so called ‘hypothetical’ situation wasn’t, and was just be treated as such to avoid future accusations of attempted blackmail. The whole thing reeked of legal positioning, and she got the sinking feeling that Daniel had already taken one of those offers, and was acting on advise already.
“Besides,” Daniel continued, the beginning of a vicious smile starting to pay out. “I doubt the whole thing will take more than a month, or even see an actual courtroom.”
That paused Blackwell.
“You think your own lawsuit will fail?” she prompted. If so, then what did he think he would accomplish with this so-called hypothetical situation?
“The DWU isn’t immune to lawsuits,” he shook his head. “If we get sufficient cause to terminate a member for theft, there’s nothing stopping them launching an unlawful severance suit themselves.
“Let me go ahead and outline how it usually works out for us,” he continued. “First, they’ll make their accusations, and demand some unreasonably large amount. We’ll immediately deny all wrong doing, and tell them we’ll settle this in court. Immediately afterwards, we launch our own internal investigation to determine one thing: just how liable are we really?”
Blackwell got a sinking belief that she had figured out how this story would go.
“If it turns out we followed every rule, if we dotted every ‘I’ and crossed every ‘T’, then we’ll stick to our lawsuit” Daniel continued. “Even if it goes forward, it’s most likely due to the fact that the other side’s lawyer is demanding payment upfront and is only going through the motions for their own paycheck. However, if it turns out that we did something wrong, if we made some mistake, then we do an internal review to see just how much money we think it would take to make the lawsuit go away. The more mistakes we made, the more chance that they might actually win the lawsuit, the higher that number is. As long as it’s less than the original demand, well, we’re still better off if we pay it.”
Blackwell halfway expected Alan to chime in at that point, but the man was grimacing and remained silent. She got the impression that the lawyer was quietly agreeing with Daniel’s scenario.
“So, if my daughter and I went ahead with this hypothetical case,” Daniel continued, patting Taylor briefly on the shoulder. She was looking at him like she had never seen him before, obvious shock at seeing this side of her father for what was likely the first time. “If we proceed and demand, oh, let’s just set the number at a million dollars, we’ll be rejected immediately. Then the school board is going to start investigating.”
His fingers drummed just a little louder on the stack of papers, filling in the pauses in his speech.
“They’ll see the emails, and move to verify them. They’ll bring in people actually capable of investigating them. They’ll match dates and times to records. They’ll have tech people review the metadata for the emails, things like IP addresses. Are you familiar with IP addresses? I don’t know much about them, but from what I understand, they’re sets of numbers that can identify all kinds of things, like the locations and devices that were used.
“Once they do that, I’m sure they’ll be able to link some of those throwaway email accounts,” Daniel glanced at Knott, who was frowning but nodding along. Since one of her classes was computers, Blackwell took that as confirmation of Daniel’s claim. “They might even be able to identify who owns those devices.”
Blackwell didn’t have to look to hard to see some of the panic that Emma, Sophia and Madison were starting to show.
“Besides that, they’ll also investigate other incidents,” Daniel went on. “They’ll try to find witnesses, third party witnesses, not participants, and get their statements about what they saw happen.”
Gladly looked pale as he realized he himself would have to explain to his boss’s boss just what he had seen. Moreover, he had already admitted in front of witnesses that he HAD witnessed events.
“And even if everything here can’t be proven,” Daniel drummed his fingers again on the paper. “Sueing is a civil case, not a criminal. For a criminal case, the standard is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. For Civil, on the other hand, it’s based on ‘preponderance of evidence’. I’m sure Alan is familiar with the phrase: it means if you’re more then fifty percent certain, that’s enough. And frankly? I don’t think it will take much for people to realize my daughter’s evidence is more likely than your feeble excuses.
“With everything we have, well, it won’t take the school board very long to realize that this isn’t some spurious case, that we have a genuine grievance, that this is a real problem for them, and they’re going to start looking to make that problem go away.” Daniel smiled at that. “And to do that, they’re going to throw money at us.”
“It sounds like you have all this worked out already,” Blackwell grit out. “But I still fail to see how this is relevant to me?”
“Well, just for convenience sake, let’s say they low ball us and we accept. Let’s say the payout as maybe two hundred and sixty thousand. That with the forty thousand earlier comes out to three hundred thousand,” he waived the hand not drumming on the pile of paper expansively. “That’s not just a mortgage for us, that’s a whole new house. That’s a generous college fund for Taylor. That’s a vacation to Hawaii, all-expense paid.
“To us,” he shrugged. “To the school board, that’s the entire teaching staff of Winslow. That was them rebuilding the entire school from scratch. That moves it from one percent of their operating budget to ten percent. More, that’s the SECOND time they’ve had to throw money at the same problem.
“And that’s when they’re going to start looking for who’s responsible for the whole mess.”
Blackwell’s stomach dropped as she realized where he was going with this.
“When the DWU loses a suit, the first two things we do is determine how we can limit our liability in the future,” Daniel leaned forward at his point. “If the reason we lost the case is that we didn’t have enough safety equipment, we make sure we have that equipment going forward. If we didn’t have enough surveillance, we up it. And if there’s a particular manager or worker who was responsible, well, we make sure that they’re not in a position to cause the issue again.
“In this instance, hypothetically of course, why exactly would the school board keep around, say, a principal who not only allowed a situation to develop to the point where they had to agree to settle, but then failed to take corrective action and then allowed the situation to continue to the point of a second settlement?” Daniel adjusted his glasses again. “Or keep around a teacher who had the opportunity to stop the situation, but just watched?” He glanced at Gladly again. “Far better to get rid of everyone who was involved rather than keep them around and chance having to deal with ANOTHER settlement if they messed up again.”
Blackwell felt sick. The worst part, was that everything Daniel had outlined wasn’t just plausible, hell, from the way he described it, it sounded REASONABLE. Why wouldn’t the school try to settle out of court if they had a reasonable belief that they would lose? Why wouldn’t they look to find who to blame and then take steps to keep a repeat from happening?
Around the room, Blackwell could see a distinct lack of empathy for her and her coworker’s situations. The Clements looked resigned, but also relieved: it wasn’t their livelihoods on the line, after all. Sophia’s social worker was frowning, her arms crossed. Blackwell didn’t for a second think it was about her personally, but more about how the PRT would have to go about reading in a new set of teachers, and how many NDAs they would have to use on the outgoing teachers who were previously in the know. Alan was still quiet, but seemed content that it wasn’t his precious little snowflake that was going to be getting the heat.
“Of course, the second thing the DWU does after they lose a suit is ‘address the appearance of impropriety’,” Daniel continued blithely, after a moment of silence to let the visions of Blackwell’s imminent future unemployment set in. “After all, it’s a hit to the Union if it’s known that they messed up. The best way to get that reputation back is to be seen taking steps to make sure whatever happened won’t happen again. It reassures everyone that even if we made a mistake, we’re serious about not making it again.
“In this case,” Danny turned a gimlet eye at the three other girls in the room. “I imagine it would be making sure the new staff aware of any troublemakers they’ll be taking on. And I imagine that they’ll make it a point to make an example out of them.”
“Now see here…” Alan leapt to his feet, sputtering.
“For Christ’ sake, shut up already Alan.” Surprisingly, it wasn’t Daniel who said this, but Mr. Clement instead. Looking resigned, the other man gave his daughter a disappointed look before turning to Daniel. “What do you think is likely?”
“Zero tolerance going forward for one thing,” Daniel nodded at the other man. “Also, max punishment on any infractions. Their primary concern will be stopping a third settlement, and the best way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to get the perpetrators out. With the DWU, that means anyone who can’t be fired immediately is given the worst jobs: scut work, things that keep them out of sight. Anything to limit them from having the chance to screw up again. For the school board, they’ll be looking for chances to build up a record on the perpetrators. If they can expel them, well, they might get into a different school, but then they’re not their problem anymore.”
Mr. Clements seemed to think about that for a moment, before he gave a resolute nod.
“That sounds fine,” he admitted, and then shushed his daughter as Madison started to protest. “All that means is that you just don’t do anything to get yourself in trouble again,” he scolded her. “Something you should have ALREADY been doing. You’re on thin ice already, missy.”
Madison immediately shrank in on herself, her protest dying.
“This is bullshit,” Sophia swore.
“This is already a mess, and already at the point where your probation could be called into question,” her caseworker cut in. The woman sounded annoyed. “Don’t make your situation worse.”
“Depending on what the investigation fines, the school may or may not take action on any previous offenses,” Daniel offered. “It will depend on how much proof they manage to recover. I’d like to say they’d take action on everything, but doing too much will just call attention to something that they most likely will want to sweep under the rug.”
He smiled briefly, his eyes hard.
“Hypothetically, of course,” he added.
“You paint a very… vivid picture,” Blackwell grit out, feeling sweat breaking out on her back.
Daniel adjusted his glasses again, and Blackwell thought back to the beginning of the meeting, and her thoughts on his unimpressive stature. At this moment, with the lights hitting just right to cause his glasses to flare, unimpressive was not the description Blackwell was feeling.
It was time to make a frank appraisal of the situation, and initiate some triage.
“I believe, with all things considered, I might be able to initiate a transfer for Ms. Hebert to Arcadia, as she requested,” Blackwell declared slowly. It would take some effort, call in a few favors, and may involve some potential groveling and owing a debt, but if it got this whole situation away from her before it fully exploded, than that was just what she was willing to do.
Taylor immediately brightened, a wide smile spreading as her earlier demand was met. Next to her, Daniel smiled as well.
“That sounds like an excellent start,” he nodded graciously. “Now, what else do you think you can provide?”
Blackwell felt the sweat on her back go cold.
“Per our earlier conversation, that was Ms. Hebert’s preferred resolution, wasn’t it?” she stammered. Taylor herself seemed surprised, staring at her father in shock.
“Yes, that is Taylor’s preference,” Daniel nodded. “My daughter just wants to put this whole thing behind her, and go on to live her best life. She is, by nature, kind, generous, and magnanimous.”
Daniel leaned forward, the smile spreading to show teeth.
“I’m not any of those things,” he snarled. “These three twits hurt my daughter, and you incompetent shits helped. Taylor might want to move on, but I want you to suffer.”
Even Taylor seemed surprised by the declaration, though Blackwell noticed for the first time that conversation Sophia looked something other than sullen: she looked reluctantly impressed by the man’s declaration.
Daniel leaned back, and resumed drumming his fingers on the tabbed pages in front of him. He adjusted his glasses again, and Blackwell suppressed a flinch when he managed to make them catch the light just enough to flash again.
“I already know my preferred method of doing that,” he admitted, glancing at the pages before looking back up at the room. “But I’m a fair man, and I’m open to negotiations. So. Let me ask you, Principal Blackwell, what can you offer us that has enough value to equal what we already have on the table?”
Blackwell had a sinking suspicion that what she did have to offer was going to end up not being enough.
‘This… this is why you never fuck with HR,’ she whimpered internally.