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“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,” Nellie admits to Brent, “I mean, everything here is going quite smoothly, no thanks to me.  If anything, I distracted them from doing their jobs because of the progress reports!” she humorously wheezes in disbelief, “Like, what does Andy even do here?”


Nellie is distracted by another rousing game of Solitare when she’s interrupted by Erin.


“It’s David Wallace,” she suddenly says.


Nellie raises her eyebrow in response, “What?”

“David is on the line, he wants to speak to Andy, now,” Erin is panicking, this has never happened before, “It’s urgent.”


Nellie begins to panic “Tell him he’s unavailable.”


“I did,” Erin responds, “He’s not taking no for an answer.”


“God, blimey… send him through, I’ll think of something.”


“Right.”  Erin was gone and within minutes David’s voice ran through the phone.


“Andy, it’s David.”


Nellie is quick on her feet, her Andy impression sounding more like a deep-voiced parrot, “That’s me, Andy Bernard, at your service.  Roo-too-too-too-to-tooo!”


“...I can tell that’s you, Nellie.”


She laughs, trying to act natural.  “Welp, ya got me!”


“Nellie, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Andy over the phone for a month now.  He’s not leaving any messages, and his emails are very brief and have nothing to do with anything regarding the branch’s performance.  He’s not even answering his cell.  Do you have the slightest idea of where he could be?”


Nellie’s pinned.  She doesn’t want to rat out Andy, especially after everything he’s done for her.  Hell, he considers him kinda sort of a friend, maybe.  But this is the Chief Executive Officer, her superior, and the last thing she needs is to be out of another job.  So she opts for the truth, just extremely vague.


“He’s had to deal with a family emergency the past couple of weeks,” she tells him, “very tragic.”


David sighs, knowing that Andy is the only reason he still has a job. “Fine,” he concedes, “I’ll accept that.  I’m going to come by on Thursday, do you think he’ll be back by then?”


Nellie, don’t you dare.  “He should be in, yes.”  Her hand is on her forehead, in instant regret.


“Great.”


“Um…” she scrambles nervously, “Is there anything you want me to pass on to Andy?”


“Yes,” David responds, “Tell him I’m proud of him, and all of you, too.”


This gives her pause.  “Really?”


“I mean, the past three months have been staggeringly great for this branch.”  Nellie mouths ‘three months’ after he says it, realizing that that’s how long Andy was gone. “I dunno what your secret is, but it’s paying off in dividends.  Seriously, wonderful job, you guys!”


Nellie accepts this compliment, “Why thank you, David.”


“Alright.  I’ll see you guys on Thursday.  Keep it up.”


“Will do,” she ends nervously, “see you then.”  After she hangs up, she suddenly does the “Thinking Man” pose.


“I’ve learned a valuable lesson today,” she addresses Brent; as she speaks, footage of the rest of the office working diligently is shown, “Sometimes you don’t need a manager to succeed.  This branch is doing just fine without one.  It’s surpassed the need for one, in fact.  And with that, I officially end my tenure as Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin Scranton for good.”  She drops the desk nameplate in the wastebasket… only to hurriedly pick it back up.  “This is Andy’s,” she explains, “Gotta fix that.”


Chapter End Notes:

This was inspired by those The Office Webisodes made, like "The Accountants", "The Outburst" and so on, that featured minor characters from the show and not the big names like Carrell, Krasinski, Fischer and Wilson.  I wanted to explore Nellie more, both because I love writing the character now after months of fleshing her out, and also I thought it'd be fascinating to see her take up the mantle of branch manager again only to have it all be for naught.  Plus, it's foreshadowing on the absolute 'Come to Jesus' moment for Andy in "Couples Discount".  Now that I have some free time, I can post "The Farm" soon after I write "Promos".

Hope you enjoyed this disorganized mess. 



3vasectomies is the author of 18 other stories.



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