- Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:

Finished most of "Suit Warehouse".  Again, having a hard time blending in the AU with canon, but I think I pulled it off pretty well in "Lice", which won't be posted for a while.  Right now, I have work and assignments as priority so I'll be focusing on those.

Enjoy! 

“Fail!  I dont wanna fail.  Again.” — Pamela Halpert


Andy is still on his boat trip.  It’s Week 3.


—————————————————————————————————————————————


Dwight can be oblivious to the point where it’s comedic… but today, he’s the most sensible person in the entire office.


“Yesterday, Angela may or may not have figured out that I’m having an affair with her husband,” Oscar tells the interviewer nervously, “So I just have to wait and see.  When she comes in, if she’s cold and awkward and cruel to me, then great, it’s business as usual.”


She walks in and… it’s very casual.  The only thing she asks about is the thermostat.  He is relieved beyond belief and says he’ll go downstairs and let someone know.  Cold, awkward, cruel.  He’s in the clear!


“She doesn’t know,” he tells them again, relieved, “I shouldn’t be surprised.  This is a woman who married a man who is obviously a homosexual.  Basically, she has her head in the sand.  In a way, I feel sorry for her.  I guess the universe rewards true love.”


He’s right in that the universe does reward true love… and he and Angela will learn that the hard way.


The cameras manage to catch Angela, staring daggers at him from the window as he sits there giving this pompous speech of his, readying a pair of scissors…


Later that day, she sees Dwight at the vending machine and makes a simple request, him behind her, as all these meetings happen: “Meet me in the old place, five minutes.  I need you.”


And he meets her there… but she made the mistake of not giving more specific instructions.


“Ugh!” she cringes upon seeing Dwight’s naked form.


“Come on in, the water’s fine,” he says.


After she makes him put his clothes back on, she asks him for his help since he can work “outside of the law”.  Reluctantly, he SMS texts a former volunteer sheriff, who’s free anytime.  That former volunteer is Trevor… who has been following people for years when getting exercise and has a $3000 gun he doesn’t even have on him.  These are, apparently, his only credentials.


For now, though, it’s good enough for Angela.


“Okay, so everything you need to know about the target is in here,” she tells Trevor, handing him the folder.


“So what’s the job?” he asks.


She hesitantly answers with “...Murder.”


Even Dwight, the second most unstable person in that broken-down minivan, can see this is a problem.


Dwight feels for her, he does, but this is a bad idea.  She can’t have someone murdered!  But she needs this person to suffer.  Why?  Because it’s proof that her life is not picturesque, it’s not perfect, it’s not something out of a Martha Stewart catalog.


But she needs to maintain this image, even if it’s a lie.  She needs to keep up the facade.  And the only way she can do that is to get rid of any obstacles… permanently.


Trevor, though?  He’s down for whatever.


“...Okay,” Dwight relents, “But it’s cruel because a woman with damaged knees can’t scrub worth a damn.”  Good thing Oscar’s a man.


Back at the office, Oscar, placating her sympathies, gives her a cookie.  And she accepts it warmly… before crushing it with her bare hands.


Dwight, noticing this exchange, sneaks up on Oscar while he’s on the phone… with Lipton.


“I just gave her a cookie,” he tells him over the phone, “and she called me an angel, so... yeah, we're good.”  He’s far from good.


Dwight wants answers.  Now.


“What?” Angela asks, “Why did you call me out here?”


“The target,” Dwight confronts Angela, “It’s Oscar, isn’t it?  He and the Senator are gaying each other.”


“...I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, feigning ignorance.  But her nostrils give it away, “Fine! It’s Oscar. So what?”


“Well, I could understand you wanting to get a stranger’s knees whacked,” Dwight explains, “But a co-worker — Dare I say, a friend?”


“Exactly, a friend,” she expresses her feelings of betrayal, “Someone who sits next to you year after year, making chit chat and smiling, and all the while running behind your back and defiling your marriage and seducing your husband!”


Dwight needs to get through to her before this gets any worse, “I can’t even imagine how painful this must be for you… but the first ones to break your marriage vows were you and me.”


She can’t refute that.  She knows she can’t.  And she hates that she can’t.


But they can’t back out now… Trevor arrives.  As Dwight gets Oscar out of the room, Angela manages to stop Trevor and distract Kevin from his sandwich cravings.


“When Angela found out that you seduced her husband,” Dwight explains to Oscar in the warehouse, “we hired a guy to break your knee caps.”


“Oh, my God!” Oscar shouts, “What is wrong with you?!”


“What is wrong with you?” Dwight chastises, “There are a million gorgeous guys in the Scranton Wilkes-Barre area, and you choose the man who’s the father of her child?”


Dwight is right on point.  And when Dwight is on point about something, you know you’ve screwed up.


Trevor, desperate to follow through with something, has to get this done.  What follows is the three men struggling with the lead pipe; Oscar wins, and thankfully, everyone’s kneecaps are still intact.


“You are incorrigible!” Oscar shouts at Dwight.


“I just saved your life!” He shoots back, “You’re welcome!”


And out walks Angela, as if on cue.


“You hired someone to hit me with a pipe!” Oscar begins.


“You deserved every bit of it!” she responds, the hurt etched in her face, “You made my husband gay.”


“What— what I did was wrong, and I have to live with that every day,” he relents, “But your husband is... gay.  He was gay when you married him!”


“No, no.”  Denial and deflection.


“Angela, until you face that, you’re gonna be confused and angry for all the wrong reasons.”  She knows this is true, but she can’t stand that it is!  “But if you want to blame me for the whole thing… go ahead — I won’t stop you.  Hit me.  You have my blessing.  Hit me.”


She grabs it, but he doesn’t let go, because it’s a lead freakin’ pipe.  She settles with a kick to the shin instead.


“You were supposed to be my friend!” she shouts as she scurries away, tears threatening to fall down her eyes.  He tries to apologize… but Dwight stops him.


The damage is done.


Dwight goes over to Angela, who’s sitting on the bench, in tears.  She’s blaming herself for the actions of another.  It’s not her who’s stupid, though, it’s jazz.  I mean, just play the right notes!  He wraps her arm around her as she leans into him.  Despite all the fights, the pining, the unsatisfying congresses… to both of them, this feels right.


Neither of them like Trevor… and yet he really likes him.


—————————————————————————————————————————————


The Halperts walk in, Pam wearing far more casual clothes than usual.


“Well, well, well, it’s finally happened,” Dwight announces, “Pam has ceased caring.”


“These are my painting clothes,” Pam clarifies, then proudly states, “I think I’m gonna do it.  I am really gonna start painting the warehouse mural today.”  Jim lightly applauds in support, as does Nellie.


“You got this, Beesley,” Jim says with pride, “Actually, do you want me to come down and help you get started?”


“Jim, come on, you have reams of paper to sell,” she says smiling at him.


“Yes,” he says with reluctance walking to his desk, “Yes, I do.”


“Huh, yeah right,” Dwight scoffs, “No worries Jim, I’ll be happy to win back all of your clients.  All I ask in return is for you to feed my cattle for a week.”


“We both know that’s not gonna happen,” Jim matter-of-factly responds.


“Hm,” Dwight says with a smile, almost proudly.  Jim then looks at the camera in annoyance.  The temptation there, though.


“I will admit,” he tells the interviewer, “my performance has been slipping a bit.”


But,” Pam stresses, her hand in his, “Everything’s gonna be fine.”


“Everything’s gonna be fine.”


“I mean, I was the worst salesperson here for like a year.”


“Andy was second, and he got promoted to branch manager.”


“Yes!  Exactly.”


“And then left his post to… sail a boat with his brother to Jamaica for three weeks.”


There’s an awkward pause before Pam says reassuringly, “Everything’s gonna be fine.”


“Yup.”


Jim continues to work, cursing at himself for imputing something wrong on a spreadsheet, something he does all the time and it’s just now getting to him.  The adjacent desk clump can’t help but notice.


“Jim’s been hard on himself lately,” Phyllis laments to the interviewer, “For years, he’s never cared about his job,” she then laughs knowingly, “I certainly don’t.  I mean, Bob’s handsome body is the only reason I’m still in this building.  Well, that and the bills.”


“No, I am not close to Jim,” Stanley admits to them, “but he is the least infuriating person in this entire office, so we’re practically the best of friends.”


“Hey, Jimmy,” Phyllis says, getting Jim’s attention, “Stanley and I are going out to lunch, wanna join us?”


He thinks about it for a second and then answers, “Why not?”


Phyllis smiles brightly while Stanley smiles and nods.


They find a nice seafood place to eat.  As they order their food, Phyllis starts the conversation.


“We’ve noticed you’ve been stressed lately,” she says to Jim.


“Well, I’ve been trying my best to hide it,” he answers with an awkward chuckle.


“You’re failing at it, son,” Stanley mentions.


Jim sighs.  “I guess I’m just… pushing myself to succeed?  I mean, it makes no sense.  For years I have not cared about my job and was great at it, but the moment I try to get into it… I suck.”


“That’s your problem, Jim,” Stanley says, “you can’t get into the work.  It’s work.”


“Exactly,” Phyllis adds, “You just gotta hunker down and get it done, or else you’ll be homeless.”


Wow, this conversation is reassuring.


“To be honest, I know I’m a good salesman,” Jim vents, “But part of me just wants to shove the clients I lost to someone else so I can focus on the ones I still have and get new ones, hopefully.  That’s why I’m willing to just let Dwight take them.”  They roll their eyes at the mention of Dwight, but they know Jim wants out if he’s that desperate.  He pauses and scoffs, “I’m sorry, I’m talking to you two like you’re my therapist.”


“No, it’s okay,” Phyllis reassures, “You need to get this out.”  Stanley nods.


“The thing is…” Jim continues, “I love Pam and the kids.  They are my life.  But… have you guys ever wanted something so badly that you just wanna risk it, no matter the consequences?”


“Jim,” Stanley begins with conviction, “have I ever told you about my dream?”


“No, you haven’t,” Jim adds.


“Oh God,” Phyllis rolls her eyes.  She knows where this is going.


“Well, I do have a dream," Stanley continues, "And it’s not some MLK dream for equality.”


And that’s how Jim learned about Stanley’s abandoned lighthouse rocket ship.


The rest of the lunch goes over amazingly, to be quite honest.  Even after eleven years, there are things they never knew about each other.  Like Dwight and Stanley’s meatball prank… I mean my God that was brilliant!  And when Phyllis finds out about the twelve cliches every time it rains, she’s shocked that she’s that predictable.  And Jim apologizes again for the whole softball-in-the-face thing.  She forgives him, of course; Charles shouldn’t have kicked the ball that hard.  What an ass.


They drive back to the office, and when they pull in, Jim has a chat with them.  Of course, both of them have had too much wine.


“Hey, I just wanna… thank you two for today,” he sighs, “I guess I never knew how much I needed it.”


“Oh, by the way,” Phyllis offers, “hand us a list of those clients.  We can get them back for you.”


Jim’s in total shock, “Really?”


“Anything to keep them from Dwight,” Stanley adds with a laugh.


“You guys are willing to do that for me?” Jim asks, exasperated.


“Of course, Jimmy,” Phyllis says happily, “We love you guys.”


“Oh my God, thank you,” he excitedly responds, giving them both a big hug as they’re still in the backseat.  As much as Jim hates this office… he does care about the people in it.


—————————————————————————————————————————————


“One of my jobs is to input customer complaints into the computer,” Pete informs the interviewer, “And when they’re in, I fill out one of these cards.  But the information’s already on the computer, so... why am I filling out the card?”


The crew plays footage of him stacking the cards.


“I asked Andy, and he said, and I quote, ‘Chillax, Italian Job’,” he continues, “and then went away on a big, long boat ride!  So here we are.  Don’t give me a pointless office chore, because I will build a little paper house.  Fight the power.”


Kevin and Darryl arrive and are enthralled with Pete’s activity informing him that it needs to be taller.


Pretty soon, the rest of the office arrives, just as enthralled with the activity.  The cards are being stacked, each card being a discovery of the office’s incompetence.  Pete learned more than he ever thought he would.


“This next card comes to us thanks to Meredith Palmer,” Pete reads, “who called Eastern Pennsylvania Seminary a, quote ‘sausage factory’.”


She celebrates with an “O-OOH!  Boom!”


“All right,” Pete says, holding up a humongous stack of cards, “Up next we got a whole lotta Creed.”


“Let’s find out what I did,” he says.  The rest of the office wish they hadn’t.


—————————————————————————————————————————————


If there’s one thing that Pam hates more than anything in this world, it’s failure.


Failure means disappointment, being let down, everything falling apart around her.  It’s dramatic, yeah, but there’s nothing worse than being told “You’re not good enough,” or “How could you do this to me?”, or “You let me down.”  That’s why she considers Mama Beesly such a reprieve: she no longer has to worry about failure.


“Wow, this is… a much bigger task than I thought it’d be,” she tells the camera, “I guess if I make a mistake, I can just paint over it with a shrub or something.  It’s just, I think less of paintings with a lot of shrubs.  So, I’m gonna limit myself to one shrub.”


This mural… it excites her.  She’s motivated by it.  This was Nellie’s best idea, and she wants to get into it just as much as she is!  But… where does she start?  How will she make this work?  Yeah, she can always just paint over it, but will it look worse?


Will people be let down?

Will Nellie be let down?

Will Jim be let down?


It doesn’t help that she has an audience, one Hidetoshi Hasagawa, Heart Surgeon Number One. 


“You paint wall now?”, he asks.


“Yeah,” she answers, “Painting now.  I just want to make sure that—” 


“You paint now.” 


She sighs, “It’s probably gonna be a few minutes.  So you can just go back to doing whatever you were doing.”


“I wait.”


Well, now she has to worry about Hide being let down.


As she breaks to grab some yogurt, she can’t help but notice what’s happening in the annex.


“Nicely done.  Very nicely done,” Pete continues, “All right, this next one goes to Darryl for pocket dialing a customer while having sex.”


“Oooohh... you salty dog!” Nellie compliments.  Darryl didn’t want to admit it was just him eating spaghetti.


Kevin attempts to keep it steady as he places it, and all of it comes crumbling down.  He’s near tears as his coworkers chastise him.


“Hey, hey, hey!” Pete announces, “it’s just a mistake!  Just a mistake!  That’s what this tower’s all about: mistakes.  Okay, if you’re afraid of screwing up, the tower’s not for you.  Show of hands… who here has never had a complaint?”


Pam raised her hand proudly, but quietly.


“That’s right.  Nobody.  See that?  Nobody,” he continues, “Okay?  Let’s get back to work, huh?  Come on, you in?”


Everyone’s back in.


Erin is… happy.  She’s happy because she doesn’t have to be anyone’s rock.  She can relax, loosen up a bit.  Part of her considers it selfish, but… she’s having fun.  But does she deserve this?  Yes.  Yes, she does.


Pam notices something about this moment that she hadn’t before… it reminds her of something.  Something from years ago…


“Okay, we will be competing for gold, silver, and bronze yogurt lids.”

“Phyllis by a nose. Gold medal in Flernenton.”

“Wow! Okay, no one else should even try!  Gold medals!”

“These are the Closing Ceremonies.  Step up.  Youre on the top one.”


She realizes that this is Pete’s Office Olympics.  The Old Beesly loved participating in those, and it’s one of her and Jim’s favorite memories before they got together.  So she decides… screw it.  She’ll walk this trip down memory lane.


Even if the challenge involves her failing.


They’re almost at the ceiling, nearly there, but they’re one card short.


“I could get us a complaint,” Pam volunteers.


“You?” Meredith snides, “Little Miss Priss?  You wouldn’t fart on a butterfly.”


“No, I wouldn’t,” she says, “I can’t even relate to that impulse.  But I bet I could get us a customer complaint.  I’d like to try.”


They’re all proud of her (except Creed), and she goes for it.


“Okay, the client is Heymont Brake and Tire,” Erin explains, “They’re family-owned, but dont let that take away from your edge!”


“Come on, Pam,” Nellie cheers her on, “I know you can fail.  I see failure in you.”  Thanks, Nell.


Creed advises her to think scummy thoughts.


And, with one cheesy ‘Yo Mama’ joke, Pamela Halpert manages to lose a client… the thing Jim’s been chastising himself over… while the regional manager is away.  Oof.  Whatever, the tower’s complete!


“Our crowning complaint card comes to us thanks to Pamela Halpert…” Pete congratulates, “For insulting a client’s recently deceased mother.”


“I did not know that,” Pam admits.


“A woman who struggled with obesity all her life.”


“Iamsosorry,” she apologizes sadly.  The rest of them agree that that’s… terrible.


And that terrible act is rewarded with applause and acceptance from her peers.


“I’m constantly worried about failure,” she tells the camera, “but there are times when I really shouldn’t.  I mean, do you think Kevin cares if he fails — or Creed or Meredith?  Oh my gosh, these are my role models now.  You know what?  I’m okay with that.  Besides, good things can come out of failure.

 

[Jim wears his blue-colored “medal” with pride as he and Pam smile at each other, while Michael is verklempt over winning the “gold medal”.]

 

Amazing things,” she continues, “And, if you’re an artist, you have to be okay with the idea that you can’t please everybody all the time.”


“You paint very bad!  Bad!”


“Shut up, Hide!”


—————————————————————————————————————————————


Dwight and Angela have a long list of questions for Toby regarding “gayness”.  Some involve Red Vines.


Chapter End Notes:

More plot summary here so the AU hasn't really kicked off yet, but writing the Dwight story was enjoyable.  It's fun to see him be the logical one for once.

Part of me is still wondering how the whole salesman-client thing works, but given the show's history, it's not uncommon by customers to be won back and by a different salesperson within the branch.  So yeah, Jim's decline is going to be much more evident as the story moves forward, but it won't be for too long.

And some found the "tower of mistakes" thing cringy and I get why, but I dunno, I like the parallel to the Office Olympics.  It's mostly for Pam; it takes her back to a time where she was more carefree, unlike now where she's bogged down with the pressure to succeed.

NEXT TIME: It's X-Mas!  As Pam begins to worry about Jim's well-being, Pete and Erin go visit Clark for a film viewing, Darryl fears his wish won't come true, and Dwight gets the whole office into the Christmas spirit.  The Belsnickel is nigh...


You must login (register) to review or leave jellybeans