The Avengers - Retail "System's Down, Call MIS" 2/4someidiothasiceOctober 27 2011, 04:25:58 UTC
Tony actually had thought the sign might not be enough for the truly oblivious, so he'd had metal plates engraved with their policy bolted onto the wall of every lane. They were bright red, with giant yellow words on them, and if every idiot customer in line who stood right next to it for ten minutes while they waited to be rung up wanted to ignore them, then so fucking be it. Tony would read the damn thing to them himself, right off the card.
Maybe he'd nod while they continued to bitch before giving them Bland Smile #4: No, I Won't Make an Exception, THIS IS OUR FUCKING POLICY, and send them on their merry way. Then he'd jump out a window, because this wasn't what he signed up for when he took over the company.
He wasn't supposed to have to deal with people, honestly. The things he did for a good lay.
"Can't you get this for me?" Tony held out the shiny cards with a big, utterly false smile. "I'm supposed to be going over the audit irregularities. How in the hell did your shrink go from two-point-six-eight to nine-point-seven-four? Have you been hiring delinquents again? I thought we talked about this after the indicent with that Sang Min kid, Steve."
"Got that backwards, Tony." Steve sighed and looked at the ceiling. "It went from nine-point-seven to two-point-seven, and that's because I fired Obie two months ago. Remember? He was falsifying return records, and MOSing legit merch. I told you that, Tony. We talked about it over the phone last month, when you were in Maine. Also, she called you, not me."
"I'm the boss of you, damnit. I say you go, you go." Tony grumbled. He looked back at the box of damaged costumes. "I bet I can salvage most of that into something sellable in the time it takes for you to take the call."
"Bucky's my boss."
"And I'm Rhodey's boss, who is Fury's boss, who is Coulson's boss and so on and so forth until we get to your little totem pole, so. I'm still the boss of you. Don't give me that, you liked it when I said that the other night. You agreed, even."
Steve turned bright red and choked on Tony's coffee. "Tony, not when we're at work," he demurred, wiping at his face with an honest-to-god handkerchief. "You should get up there. Also, hey. Chinese or Italian for lunch? I'm thinking of ordering in a bit, and since you'll be around for a while... You are going to be around for a while, right?"
"Oh knock it off. I'm taking you and Bruce over to Friday's, we've got to discuss the Christmas displays and the fourth quarter budget." Tony said, peeking over his shoulder through the window in the door leading to the stockroom. He could just make out Peter struggling, trying to get a box twice his body mass up onto an overhead. Tony smiled.
"Bruce hates Friday's," Steve said quietly, moving his six of diamonds. He turned in his rolling chair and looked up at Tony, his arms crossed over his chest. "You don't want him to go into another rage and try to kill you again, do you?"
"Fine, fine. We'll do the Japanese steakhouse. He likes the onion volcano thingie they do."
The Avengers - Retail "System's Down, Call MIS" 3/4someidiothasiceOctober 27 2011, 04:31:18 UTC
"Tony, please come to register one. Tony--"
"Christ, I'm coming!" Tony bellowed, making the customers standing near the office all flinch. He gave them all Bland Smile #1: Yes, I See You and Still Don't Give a Fuck and snatched up the cards, doing his level best not to slam the door on his way out.
Tony stalked to the front of the store, where a mother had been adamantly trying to return a toy whose box had been ripped open in several places. He calmly explained to her that without a receipt, he couldn't accept the merchandise, sorry, but if she wanted she could exchange it for the same item, to which she responded that her kid already had one, and what was she supposed to do with two of the same thing?
Tony looked at her crazy eyes and tried a leering smile. It never worked, especially on angry housewives, but the employees always thought it was funny.
"You know," he said with a smarmy smile, leaning forward over the counter to lay his hand on her wrist, "if you'd like to discuss this matter over a cup of coffee I could get my store manager to watch your children for you. There's an excellent little bistro on the corner. We could discuss our store policy in depth, maybe work something out."
"Oh my lord, are you hitting on me? Have you no shame?" The woman snatched her hand back, as well as the toy box (and Tony could see the $14.88! red Target sticker on the bottom of it). "I want your name. I'm going to write to your main office, you have no right to treat me like--"
"Let me introduce myself. I'm Tony Stark," he said, deadpan. Immediately her eyes widened and she pushed her frazzled hair back.
"Oh!" Tony watched as she straightened up and tried to discreetly pick off the lollipop that had been stuck to the side of her sweater. "Mr. Stark. It's wonderful to meet you! I'm so sorry, but my son got this as a birthday present, and he opened it up before I could stop him, and I just wanted to know if I could--"
"Let me stop you right there." He gently took the toy from her hand and turned it upside down, showing her the sticker she'd somehow missed. "Target's in the next shopping center. I hear they take things back no receipts and no penalties. Okay? Okay. You have yourself a good day now, ma'am."
The mother blushed a little when she saw the sticker and brushed her hair back again. Darcy made a small noise behind him when the lollipop got stuck in it and Tony stepped back a little, right onto her foot, and pressed down.
"I'm so sorry, I had no idea! I feel like an idiot, now."
"Happens all the time." Tony gave her Bland Smile #12: That's Right, You're an Idiot, It's Okay and waved at her and her kids. The little boy in the shopping cart stuck his tongue out at him. Tony waited for the mother to turn around before he bared his teeth at him.
She walked away, muttering at herself under her breath, and Tony was free to spin around and glower at Darcy. She did her best to look innocent, but he knew all her tricks.
"You've been working here for six years now," he started. "You saw the sticker, you have a tracker right here next to you, you knew that barcode was about nine numbers too long to be recognized by the software, yet you still pulled me up here to deal with harassed customers. What gives? You mad at me? You're mad. Look, I'm not sure what's going on with you--"
"Not mad, boss," she stopped him with a smile. "I just thought, you know, it's been so long since we've seen you, and with all your clothes on--"
"I swear, your assistant sends out one bad Christmas card--"
"--and we just wanted to know if you'd be here for the weekend, 'cause the girls wanted to throw you and Steve an engagement party."
"--and it haunts you for the rest of your-- wait, what?"
Darcy and the other front end specialist, the sassy redhead with too much of an opinion for retail, both beamed at him in glee. He glared back but they weren't swayed at all. He was the boss of them. They were supposed to fear him, damnit.
"Oh, so you aren't moving to Malibu to live in sin together?" Natasha picked up the magazine that had been on the counter, which hey, they were supposed to be selling those, not leafing through them while on the clock. "Entertainment Weekly said you were."
The Avengers - Retail "System's Down, Call MIS" 4/4someidiothasiceOctober 27 2011, 04:32:36 UTC
She chucked the magazine at him and he snatched it out of the air, staring in horror at the candid shot of Steve and him on a boat (motherfucker, his brain helpfully inserted for him) that graced the front page.
Two days ago they had been on Tony's yacht. They had been topless, like most people out at sea tend to be, which wasn't so surprising. But they'd been fresh into this whole sex thing between them for just over a week, so they might've been a little... handsy. The snapshot wasn't the greatest quality, but it showed Steve holding up a strawberry to Tony's mouth with a coy smile clearly enough.
He stared down at the title, BILLIONAIRE CEO CAUGHT WITH BOYTOY, SEE PAGE TWELVE FOR DETAILS!, for a full minute before his brain came back online.
"This is just, no. We're not, like, it's seriously not like there's anything, I mean, if there was anything it's not like it would be serious. Not that I wouldn't like things to one day, maybe. You know what, this is forbidden. We are never discussing this, you hear me? This is just, nothing that anyone needs to spend any time talking about, okay." He knew he was babbling, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself.
Not when Darcy and Natasha were looking at him with those stupid, tiny smiles of theirs.
"I take people out on the boat all the time. I took you and that weird hippie with the long hair out for your one year. Don't give me that look, Loki's totally a hippie."
Darcy soft smile disappeared and she opened her mouth, probably to say something catty and inappropriate (fired, Tony thought darkly, so fired) when the lights flickered off and the store was plunged into darkness.
The generators in the basement came to life and the store lit up again almost immediately. It was quiet for about two seconds before everyone burst into movement.
It was only a brief blackout, but that was all they needed. The registers whined and started beeping like crazy and people, stupid animals they were, started to panic.
Tony closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as Darcy and Natasha started moving around him in a flurry.
"What's going-- oh no, they're--"
"--yes, they're rebooting. And the doors are jammed, hand me the--"
"--the lines are all down, damnit, here, use my cell phone, see if we can get Jarvis from Tech--"
"--Happy's got his men on the door, and that's just perfect, now the alarm system's gone off, that's just fuc--"
"What's going on?"
Tony didn't startle when Steve came up behind him and brushed a hand over his hip, but he did narrow his eyes when Natasha nudged Darcy and jerked her head back at them.
"My tracker won't come back online," Steve whined, holding up the dead scangun in his hand. "I think it's broken."
"The system's down," Tony said, pulling the tracker from Steve's hand and placing it on top of the glossy policy cards. He tugged Steve from the customer service desk by his belt, ignoring the way Darcy grinned down at her computer. Hey, they already knew there was something going on. In for a penny, and all that.
"We're going to go... call MIS for you. Keep up the good work, ladies!"
"Tony!" Steve yelped as Tony backed them into the electrical closet. "That's not my phone!"
Natasha shook her head at the closed door, then she jumped when she heard an almighty crash come from the front door and Thor's booming voice floated over the crowd.
"I knew I should've taken that job at Langley," she said. Then she picked up her emergency baseball bat and marched into the fray.
Re: The Avengers - Retail "System's Down, Call MIS" 4/4leupagusOctober 27 2011, 05:14:43 UTC
Oh man - if retail had ever been anything like that, I would've gone back years ago. This is fantastic - plus I love how you got Sang Min from H50 in there.
Maybe he'd nod while they continued to bitch before giving them Bland Smile #4: No, I Won't Make an Exception, THIS IS OUR FUCKING POLICY, and send them on their merry way. Then he'd jump out a window, because this wasn't what he signed up for when he took over the company.
He wasn't supposed to have to deal with people, honestly. The things he did for a good lay.
"Can't you get this for me?" Tony held out the shiny cards with a big, utterly false smile. "I'm supposed to be going over the audit irregularities. How in the hell did your shrink go from two-point-six-eight to nine-point-seven-four? Have you been hiring delinquents again? I thought we talked about this after the indicent with that Sang Min kid, Steve."
"Got that backwards, Tony." Steve sighed and looked at the ceiling. "It went from nine-point-seven to two-point-seven, and that's because I fired Obie two months ago. Remember? He was falsifying return records, and MOSing legit merch. I told you that, Tony. We talked about it over the phone last month, when you were in Maine. Also, she called you, not me."
"I'm the boss of you, damnit. I say you go, you go." Tony grumbled. He looked back at the box of damaged costumes. "I bet I can salvage most of that into something sellable in the time it takes for you to take the call."
"Bucky's my boss."
"And I'm Rhodey's boss, who is Fury's boss, who is Coulson's boss and so on and so forth until we get to your little totem pole, so. I'm still the boss of you. Don't give me that, you liked it when I said that the other night. You agreed, even."
Steve turned bright red and choked on Tony's coffee. "Tony, not when we're at work," he demurred, wiping at his face with an honest-to-god handkerchief. "You should get up there. Also, hey. Chinese or Italian for lunch? I'm thinking of ordering in a bit, and since you'll be around for a while... You are going to be around for a while, right?"
"Oh knock it off. I'm taking you and Bruce over to Friday's, we've got to discuss the Christmas displays and the fourth quarter budget." Tony said, peeking over his shoulder through the window in the door leading to the stockroom. He could just make out Peter struggling, trying to get a box twice his body mass up onto an overhead. Tony smiled.
"Bruce hates Friday's," Steve said quietly, moving his six of diamonds. He turned in his rolling chair and looked up at Tony, his arms crossed over his chest. "You don't want him to go into another rage and try to kill you again, do you?"
"Fine, fine. We'll do the Japanese steakhouse. He likes the onion volcano thingie they do."
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"Christ, I'm coming!" Tony bellowed, making the customers standing near the office all flinch. He gave them all Bland Smile #1: Yes, I See You and Still Don't Give a Fuck and snatched up the cards, doing his level best not to slam the door on his way out.
Tony stalked to the front of the store, where a mother had been adamantly trying to return a toy whose box had been ripped open in several places. He calmly explained to her that without a receipt, he couldn't accept the merchandise, sorry, but if she wanted she could exchange it for the same item, to which she responded that her kid already had one, and what was she supposed to do with two of the same thing?
Tony looked at her crazy eyes and tried a leering smile. It never worked, especially on angry housewives, but the employees always thought it was funny.
"You know," he said with a smarmy smile, leaning forward over the counter to lay his hand on her wrist, "if you'd like to discuss this matter over a cup of coffee I could get my store manager to watch your children for you. There's an excellent little bistro on the corner. We could discuss our store policy in depth, maybe work something out."
"Oh my lord, are you hitting on me? Have you no shame?" The woman snatched her hand back, as well as the toy box (and Tony could see the $14.88! red Target sticker on the bottom of it). "I want your name. I'm going to write to your main office, you have no right to treat me like--"
"Let me introduce myself. I'm Tony Stark," he said, deadpan. Immediately her eyes widened and she pushed her frazzled hair back.
"Oh!" Tony watched as she straightened up and tried to discreetly pick off the lollipop that had been stuck to the side of her sweater. "Mr. Stark. It's wonderful to meet you! I'm so sorry, but my son got this as a birthday present, and he opened it up before I could stop him, and I just wanted to know if I could--"
"Let me stop you right there." He gently took the toy from her hand and turned it upside down, showing her the sticker she'd somehow missed. "Target's in the next shopping center. I hear they take things back no receipts and no penalties. Okay? Okay. You have yourself a good day now, ma'am."
The mother blushed a little when she saw the sticker and brushed her hair back again. Darcy made a small noise behind him when the lollipop got stuck in it and Tony stepped back a little, right onto her foot, and pressed down.
"I'm so sorry, I had no idea! I feel like an idiot, now."
"Happens all the time." Tony gave her Bland Smile #12: That's Right, You're an Idiot, It's Okay and waved at her and her kids. The little boy in the shopping cart stuck his tongue out at him. Tony waited for the mother to turn around before he bared his teeth at him.
She walked away, muttering at herself under her breath, and Tony was free to spin around and glower at Darcy. She did her best to look innocent, but he knew all her tricks.
"You've been working here for six years now," he started. "You saw the sticker, you have a tracker right here next to you, you knew that barcode was about nine numbers too long to be recognized by the software, yet you still pulled me up here to deal with harassed customers. What gives? You mad at me? You're mad. Look, I'm not sure what's going on with you--"
"Not mad, boss," she stopped him with a smile. "I just thought, you know, it's been so long since we've seen you, and with all your clothes on--"
"I swear, your assistant sends out one bad Christmas card--"
"--and we just wanted to know if you'd be here for the weekend, 'cause the girls wanted to throw you and Steve an engagement party."
"--and it haunts you for the rest of your-- wait, what?"
Darcy and the other front end specialist, the sassy redhead with too much of an opinion for retail, both beamed at him in glee. He glared back but they weren't swayed at all. He was the boss of them. They were supposed to fear him, damnit.
"Oh, so you aren't moving to Malibu to live in sin together?" Natasha picked up the magazine that had been on the counter, which hey, they were supposed to be selling those, not leafing through them while on the clock. "Entertainment Weekly said you were."
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Two days ago they had been on Tony's yacht. They had been topless, like most people out at sea tend to be, which wasn't so surprising. But they'd been fresh into this whole sex thing between them for just over a week, so they might've been a little... handsy. The snapshot wasn't the greatest quality, but it showed Steve holding up a strawberry to Tony's mouth with a coy smile clearly enough.
He stared down at the title, BILLIONAIRE CEO CAUGHT WITH BOYTOY, SEE PAGE TWELVE FOR DETAILS!, for a full minute before his brain came back online.
"This is just, no. We're not, like, it's seriously not like there's anything, I mean, if there was anything it's not like it would be serious. Not that I wouldn't like things to one day, maybe. You know what, this is forbidden. We are never discussing this, you hear me? This is just, nothing that anyone needs to spend any time talking about, okay." He knew he was babbling, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself.
Not when Darcy and Natasha were looking at him with those stupid, tiny smiles of theirs.
"I take people out on the boat all the time. I took you and that weird hippie with the long hair out for your one year. Don't give me that look, Loki's totally a hippie."
Darcy soft smile disappeared and she opened her mouth, probably to say something catty and inappropriate (fired, Tony thought darkly, so fired) when the lights flickered off and the store was plunged into darkness.
The generators in the basement came to life and the store lit up again almost immediately. It was quiet for about two seconds before everyone burst into movement.
It was only a brief blackout, but that was all they needed. The registers whined and started beeping like crazy and people, stupid animals they were, started to panic.
Tony closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as Darcy and Natasha started moving around him in a flurry.
"What's going-- oh no, they're--"
"--yes, they're rebooting. And the doors are jammed, hand me the--"
"--the lines are all down, damnit, here, use my cell phone, see if we can get Jarvis from Tech--"
"--Happy's got his men on the door, and that's just perfect, now the alarm system's gone off, that's just fuc--"
"What's going on?"
Tony didn't startle when Steve came up behind him and brushed a hand over his hip, but he did narrow his eyes when Natasha nudged Darcy and jerked her head back at them.
"My tracker won't come back online," Steve whined, holding up the dead scangun in his hand. "I think it's broken."
"The system's down," Tony said, pulling the tracker from Steve's hand and placing it on top of the glossy policy cards. He tugged Steve from the customer service desk by his belt, ignoring the way Darcy grinned down at her computer. Hey, they already knew there was something going on. In for a penny, and all that.
"We're going to go... call MIS for you. Keep up the good work, ladies!"
"Tony!" Steve yelped as Tony backed them into the electrical closet. "That's not my phone!"
Natasha shook her head at the closed door, then she jumped when she heard an almighty crash come from the front door and Thor's booming voice floated over the crowd.
"I knew I should've taken that job at Langley," she said. Then she picked up her emergency baseball bat and marched into the fray.
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And now I'll stop spamming you, I swear.
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Thanks, babe! =D
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::FLAILS LIKE A FLAILING THING::
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I love this story and of course Darcy would be Customer Service.
Brilliant!
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Thank you!
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