Chapter Text
T-minus thirteen days to Black Friday. It’s one of the busiest times of the year at Macy’s, leading up to the busiest time of the year. Phil has been planning for weeks, assigning roles, walking his people through their parts, drawing up contingency plans and making sure they’re memorized. His people are prepared, his floors are prepared, everything will run smoothly as God is his witness .
So of course Fucking Fred happens.
“This,” Fred says, showing all his teeth, “is Clint Hanson.”
Phil regards him blankly. The new hire—Hanson—is a grim-looking blond man in his thirties, with a face that looks like it’s met one too many two-by-fours during its career. He’s dressed in a purplish-brown abomination that’s tight around the shoulders and arms. It’s not an ill-fitted suit, exactly, but it definitely isn’t what Phil would have expected to see on anyone who’s not color-blind and gone through orientation.
Hanson’s face grows even more sour at the short silence.
“Nice to meet you,” Phil says at last, offering his hand.
“Phil’s one of my best people,” Fred tells Hanson. “He’ll be able to show you around and teach you everything you’ll need to know. His department’s one of our most profitable. He can show you around. Everyone knows Phil. He’s practically running the store.”
There’s no ‘practically’ about it, which Fred knows just as well as Phil does. Just as Phil knows Fred doesn’t hire anyone unless it’s as a personal trade in favors or repayment of some debt. His hires are almost uniformly horrible.
Phil sighs, anticipating inconvenience in his future. Fred is gone between one blink and the next.
“Uh,” Hanson says, looking confused at his employer’s disappearance. “Do you need my resume?”
A resume is a nice improvement on the usual quality of Fred’s hires. Phil is pleasantly surprised.
They get all kinds at Macy’s, seasonally speaking. Even with the higher standards set by being the flagship store, they’re a varied lot. High school dropouts, second career mothers, ex-Wall Street rehabs. They haven’t really gotten a type like Hanson before, though. His work record lists six years at a circus, four years in the Army, thirteen years as an independent ‘security contractor,’ and his last gig: three days as a barista.
“Three days?” Phil asks, curious.
“It felt like longer.”
“You quit?”
“The coffee shop sort of—“ He makes a vague handwavey gesture that’s somehow far more descriptive than one might expect. “Boom?”
This is a conversational turd that would disqualify someone from retail at any other time of the year. “You should fit right in here,” Phil says without irony.
“I’m not really good with—” Hanson begins, and looks around himself like he’s baffled at finding himself here, now, in the mothership of New York consumerism. Specifically, in the dinnerware and wedding registry section of Macy’s Cellar floor.
“China?”
“Breakable things.”
“China,” Phil sighs.
“And, well. People. Places. Budapest.” At Phil’s slowly rising eyebrow, he adds, “Mostly I just beat them up if they irritate me.”
“You beat up Budapest?”
Hanson shrugs, conveying he can’t take responsibility for who—or what—might irritate him at any given moment.
Phil has worked for Macy’s long enough that he has no fundamental problems with this philosophy. “Corporate probably has something about that in the handbook, though I don’t think they’re that specific about it.”
Hanson brightens. “It says we're not allowed to beat up fellow employees.”
“Nothing about customers?”
"Nope. Just fellow employees. I checked.”
Phil says thoughtfully, “Seasonal retail is an interesting life choice for you.”
“It’s a paycheck.” Hanson shrugs again, and eyes a woman wandering into the section with the kind of wariness normally reserved for frothing dogs and door-to-door evangelists. She approaches the china display wall. Hanson goes into high alert, muscles tensing in a way Phil recognizes from years in war zones.
On the off chance his new employee is thinking of tackling the customer, Phil suggests, “Maybe stay away from actual assault during your first week.”
Hanson’s sudden, mischievous smile has the disorienting impact of a flash grenade. “That’s nice. None of my other bosses have ever set that expectation with me until after the fact.”
“Hm,” Phil says.
“Call me Clint,” Hanson adds.
Phil's calling it now. This one’s going to be Trouble.