Chapter Text
Employee Evaluation week was rightfully considered to be the most terrifying time to be inside of the Time Balance Department. The day where CR sent down its most judgemental of evaluators to observe the companies’ employees and rank their performance amongst their peers, all with the express interest of seeing who either needed a disciplinary meeting, a pay cut, or worse.
Dark Fondue was the most infamous of them all amongst CR, and for good reason. While she only focused on the highest ranked employees of the TBD, she could make even the most self-assured and experienced managers balk in fear whenever she showed up without warning for their respective evaluation. Even Baguette could be seen scrambling around her office to make sure everything was presentable, and that was almost unheard of from the one being capable of standing up to the CR manager.
She delighted in it all, of course. Whipping everyone into tip top shape and watching those who failed to do so squirm in fear was the highlight of her year. But even she wasn’t immune to the need of an evaluation. In that case, someone else in the department would have to take up her role and judge her work like they would with the regular employees, complete with an ending interview to gauge how they personally believed they were doing at work.
Not that it ever worried her, since she had been acing her own evaluations since the day she’d arrived at the TBD.
But to her great annoyance, the usual employee who performed her evaluation had gotten sick. A bad case of the flu that wouldn’t let up until well after the evaluation period was over. A replacement was needed. And the director had stepped in for the occasion to personally assign her evaluator for her, giving her an eerie grin as she told her who it was.
“Gosh, I’m so nervous right now. I hope I get this right!” Coffee Candy Cookie, the Registry Divisions own personally selected notary, who had now been personally selected to be an evaluator.
They had spent all day together, Dark Fondue performing her usual duties of visiting departments, approving documents and dealing with disputes, while the younger woman followed her around writing down her observations in her notebook. It had been an annoying experience at first, especially with the way she piped up to ask her questions while she was in the middle of things, but her presence was ultimately easy to ignore.
“There’s no need to be nervous, I’m sure you’ll do a great job at this.” She had said in return. Obviously that was sarcasm. First impressions told everything for Dark Fondue, and this one’s first impression was that she would always find a refreshingly unique way to screw things up. It was only a matter of time, and the way she often tripped while trying to keep up with her or stumbled on her words failed to inspire any confidence otherwise.
It was depressing, she had even asked for a full day off just so she could prepare for this, and still she had these little hiccups in her performance. She was lucky she had only barely passed her own evaluation. That B was looking a little too generous by now.
Regardless of her competency, the day had passed, and now the two were seated in the head office of Cookie Resources. Tastefully decorated with all her earned accolades, along with a corkboard full of reviews of her evaluated employees. She had made sure to place Coffee Candy dead center on the board, just so she could see her score while they had the interview. Just to be sure she knew what she thought of her.
“Thank you, Miss. It’s just, I’m really excited to be doing this.” The coffee cookie admitted, hugging her notebook like a schoolgirl nervously awaiting her first day. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to perform an interview. I’m scared my skills have gotten rusty, that’s why I wanted the day off yesterday, and-”
“You don’t have to explain, I understand it’s difficult for employees of your caliber to adapt to unexpected changes.” She waved dismissively. “Just go ahead and start the interview so you can go back to do the work you were hired to do.”
Coffee Candy squirmed a little in her seat. Good, good, it helped to establish the pecking order ahead of time. This interview would be done with, she’d receive her glowing review the next day, and then she’d go home and order a strawberry daiquiri as a reward for another job well done.
Although, the girl didn’t stay fearful for long. She sat straight, cleared her throat, grabbed the clipboard with the questionnaire to keep it on hand, with her notebook resting on her lap. The sudden confident aura she gained almost impressed her, the way she was handling this situation.
Almost, that is.
“Alright! Let’s begin then!”
The interview was painfully standard. Name, position, what she felt about her workplace, what needed improving, the usual boring crap. Coffee Candy sounded so cheerful every time she asked a question, and giggled to herself at every answer, like this was a riveting foray into getting to know her coworker rather than a bland, by the numbers examination of workplace competency.
The faster it was done with, the better, Dark Fondue supposed. She answered every question diligently, and made sure to bring up the complaints she had regarding certain problem employees (which was very funny, seeing the gears in Coffee Candy’s head turn as she indirectly insulted her performance).
“What do you want to see changed in your workplace?”
“What I want to see is that everyone in the TBD reaches their true potential, and is able to give their all for our sacred duty.” She answered. “And if it means weeding out its weak links, well that wouldn’t be bad, now would it?” That part was emphasized with a pointed look aimed at Coffee Candy.
Coffee Candy failed to notice, humming merrily as she jotted down the answer. “I’m sure that with your help, all of us will get there eventually. I know Baguette has done a lot in helping me improve, but I want to let you know that you are a big motivation for me too.”
Awww, that was almost moving, in spite of how transparently obvious an attempt it was at getting on her good side. But she’d learned long ago never to trust Coffee Candy’s type. She simply gave her most well-practiced laugh and waved it off.
Coffee Candy turned back to the questionnaire. There was still more to ask, and it was around here that the more interesting questions were. ”Ok, would you say you have friction with a particular division in the TBD?”
“The Relic Management Division.” She answered without hesitation. “Incompetent workers, an incompetent manager who I need to threaten on the daily to get anything done, an especially infuriating problem employee whose name shall not be mentioned. I could go on, but we don’t have all day for me to explain my grievances.”
Coffee Candy nodded. “It’s- it’s fair, yes. Personally I think Schneeball is at least a dedicated worker, but I understand the friction. Do you think you might have a hand in the friction caused with RMD?”
“No.” Dark Fondue responded curtly. Coffee Candy blinked.
She wrote it down, and when she flipped the page over, Coffee Candy paused. She looked unsure of herself at first, but after taking a deep breath, she nodded and turned to face Dark Fondue again, and asked: “So, is it true that you’ve threatened to slash the RMD’s budget multiple times?”
… huh?
Dark Fondue blinked. This was not on the questionnaire, and she knew that well, she put it together after all. She’d told Coffee Candy that adding questions was fine, but what pushed her to ask that?
She smiled through the confusion. “Excuse me?”
The girl grinned nervously. “Sorry, it’s a strange question. It’s just that I decided to ask around the division yesterday, and they told me there were rumors you did that.”
Really now? That was an interesting thread to follow. It was true, to be fair, but still a very strange question to ask out of the blue. What was this about?
Better fish for information.
“And you are asking this based on a rumor?” She inquired further.
Coffee Candy blushed, but she didn’t look intimidated, despite the pointedness with which she had delivered the question. She looked so… assured of herself. “I know, it sounds bad. The thing is I learned as a journalist to follow any thread I found, no matter how outlandish or silly it seemed on the surface. I’d have to look at every angle objectively and find out what was real and what wasn’t, and in the process I’d be able to get the closest to the most truthful version of the story.”
She smiled at her, a sweet smile that radiated innocence and kindness as she said things that utterly horrified Dark Fondue. “That’s why I wanted a day to prepare. I wanted to check in with the other staff members for their opinions on you to get a better idea on your performance. That way we can have more empirical evidence to support the final grade. That makes sense, right?”
That… that it did, it made perfect sense. Being able to cross reference what people thought she did with what she actually did was not a bad idea in the slightest. Not without accounting for the fact that she knew that she was a… controversial figure amongst the TBD’s lower rung… and the higher one too. But she could deal with that. She could disprove whatever they had to say…
Yeah.
Dark Fondue’s own smile strained to stay where it was. The sweat drop sliding down her forehead might have gone unnoticed by Coffee Candy, but to her it felt like a nail dragging across her skin. “How bold of you to try that, haha! Do you really think you can trust their opinions on my own performance?”
Coffee Candy giggled. “Hehe, yeah, you aren’t exactly… popular with the rest of the staff. But that’s what this is for! I can run all these statements through you to verify if they are true or false and get a more accurate visual of your performance! I promise I won’t be biased myself, I am taking their point of view and your own with equal scrutiny.”
How reassuring. Well. She had her reasons, she could explain her way through this. There was no reason to be nervous about something as simple as one surprise question.
She cleared her throat. “Well, yes, I have. Unfortunately for the RMD, their performance has been below expectations for quite some time, and the threat of slashing their budget is the only thing that keeps them from turning into dead weight for the TBD. It’s a necessary evil.”
“That’s fair, yes. So, would you say you’ve also threatened to do so based on petty grievances?”
Her hand gripped the hem of her skirt a little tighter. “Ah, how so?”
“Maple Taffy told me you’ve used that threat to make him leave you alone during lunch, and even outside of work during the weekly bar hangouts with the other managers?” Coffee Candy asked, voice steady and matter of fact.
So he had. She was going to have to talk with Maple Taffy later… except without using that tactic. Dark Fondue groaned, because that was in fact the truth. “Haha, well, you see… I have. But merely as a jest. As a bit of light comedy, I’ve never meant the threat in those occasions, those are against policy after all, haha.”
Coffee Candy didn’t respond. She wrote something down in her notebook, wordlessly and with a neutral gaze in her eyes. Whatever she wrote made Dark Fondue… oh god she was nervous.
No, no, calm down Fondue. This was a simple anomaly. There was no way she had come up with more questions like this.
She had come up with more questions.
For every standard question that Dark Fondue understood how to handle, Coffee Candy had multiple additions, each based on things she had inquired with the different divisions. Rumors and anecdotes involving her and things she had done that made the CR Manager look less and less respectable than she hoped.
She asked about issues navigating the archives, Dark Fondue responded with a gripe she had with the archivist, and then Coffee Candy brought up the fact she had often bypassed their approval in order to search for employee documents despite needing written permission.
That pattern repeated every time, the rookie just… knowing things about her she didn’t even realize where possible. Little acts of petulance, or worse, outright mistakes she had made in the moments she thought had gone unnoticed.
“I’ve never failed to deliver any necessary documents, not once.”
“Uhm, but what about that requisition form for the new water coolers that Facility Management never received?”
“Ah… which one?”
“From three months ago, they’ve been waiting the entire time for a response, but you never got back to them.”
“I guess I, aaaah, I forgot?”
It was so unpleasant to have to admit to these little screw ups. She prided herself on being the very bastion of perfect performance that the TBD could look up to, and each little accusation the younger woman questioned her on felt like taking a sledge hammer to her reputation.
It was hurting to keep up her smile, too. And they weren’t even done with the interview yet. There was still more to come.
“Now I was told by Facility Management that you sometimes request that they perform cleanups of certain offices, is that correct?”
“Yes, I often come across offices that are not kept up to the standards of cleanliness we like to enforce here. I make sure to leave strongly worded letters after the fact, but they seem to have a habit of not taking my warnings seriously.”
“That makes sense, I know I’ve been a bit messy myself. But I did check with the head custodian, and I was told that to do that, you need to have written approval from the departments to allow them to clean in their offices. Is that correct?”
“... yes.”
“Do you ask for those approval forms, Dark Fondue Cookie?”
“... yes.” She half-lied. Half because she did in fact follow that procedure. Most of the time. And maybe the rest of the time she was willing to force the clean-up anyway to deal with particularly irksome desk jockeys who never remembered to clean.
The way Coffee Candy looked at her before jotting down something on her notebook gave her the feeling that she didn’t believe that half-lie.
“Have you ever misused company equipment?”
“I would, ehem, I would love to say that I haven’t?”
Coffee Candy gave her a sad smile. “Baguette says you sometimes use one of the printing presses to heat up your hair.”
“Ah, so she has.” That was meant to be a secret between them, they both knew regular curling irons couldn’t achieve the right consistency of fondue without ending up drowned in chocolate.
“If it makes you feel any better, I know that she does the same thing, but with the office microwave.” She whispered to her, hiding her devious grin behind her notebook.
It did not. That one was also a closely guarded secret, and somehow this girl had found even that out.
After what felt like an eternity of this humiliating ritual, a beacon of hope finally bothered to light up for her as Coffee Candy inspected her list.
“Ok, these are the last few questions. I’m sorry if this has been a bit stressful for you.”
“I’m sure you think that.” Dark Fondue grumbled, though not loud enough for Coffee Candy to notice. Ugh, just the fact that she could tell she had been stressed out by this made her feel like wanting to take a chunk out of her own hair and eat it.
Coffee Candy flipped the page over. If nothing else, this nightmare was almost done with. A little part of her dared to say she was impressed with this example of her investigative skills, and that was subsequently squashed by feelings of hatred. Once a screw up, always a screw up. Those were the rules of life, and she was not going to be reconsidering it.
Witches, she really needed a break after this, this anger was not healthy for her dough.
“Ok, so, as the head of CR, how do you think your performance ranks?” Coffee Candy waited expectantly for her answer.
A good question, finally. Her confidence was starting to return to her now that she was back in her wheelhouse. No matter what she could say, there was no denying her absolute excellence in her field.
“Well, personally, I consider myself to be one of the TBD’s most important employees. Everything that happens here has to go through me first, and I ensure that it can and does happen to the absolute best of my abilities. So, if I had to rank myself, I would say I’m more than worthy of an S+. Haha.”
“And would you say that’s an improvement compared to your previous results?”
“I would hope so. I’ve maintained a perfect score in my years at the TBD, so it’s honestly quite difficult to tell, haha!”
The girl hummed, looking down at her notes and pursing her lips in thought. Then, she spoke.
“Are you being honest with me, Dark Fondue Cookie?”
Why she was indeed being honest, it wasn’t like she had received an abhorrently terrible review once in her early years, one that made her look utterly inferior in comparison to a certain straight-laced Time Registry Manager, and certainly did it not haunt her on certain nights when said straight-laced manager gave her one of her patented critiques about her behaviour.
Dark Fondue nodded. Her hand clutched even tighter at her skirt. That would need ironing later.
The coffee girl did not look convinced. An internal debate occurred for her, humming to herself before deciding to ask one more question.
“Then what about that performance review from 2018?”
Somewhere, a gear fell off a mechanism and beaned a cookie in the head. A Facility Management member passed through the hallways below the office on a floor scrubber. A relic was smashed to pieces by a certain over-excuberant employee while her manager screamed. All of these were sounds Dark Fondue focused on as she pretended to ignore that question. “What was that?”
“You got a lower than average grade in that year, right? Are… are you embarrassed, Dark Fondue?” Coffee Candy smiled in surprise, her pigtails wiggling at this shocking development.
Dark Fondue’s smile strained harder than ever before. If she had a mirror, she’d realize just how disturbing she looked, but right now all she could do was search desperately for a way to steer away from this. “Aaaaaaah- Oh goodness, I think I had the aircon low the entire time, it’s gotten so hot already! Why don’t you leave the room while I fix that up, hmm?”
She’d gotten up to start shoving Coffee Candy out through the door, the poor girl utterly befuddled as she was dragged around. “But it’s not even that warm-”
“Sure, sure, and get yourself some water while you’re at it, come back in a few minutes!”
Out the door and slammed shut, and that was when Dark Fondue finally let the mask off.
She leaned against the door, grabbed her head in her hands, and let out a long, pained groan of welled up stress as she finally, finally admitted to herself:
She knew. Coffee Candy had found out her most humiliating secret.
She slammed the back of her head against the door. How did she figure all of that out? That performance review happened years ago, and she was sure she had shredded all evidence of its existence so that it could only haunt her in her own dreams. It should have been impossible!
She gripped at a strand of her hair and yanked at it, feeling the fondue stretch and strain in order to try and knock herself out of this breakdown. The only other way Coffee Candy could have found that out was if she had somehow gone down to the archives and looked at the record of her performance reviews, where every grade was logged and untouchable, and that required a permission slip from the manager, which required a request form to be filled out at least a day ahead of time. How could she…
Oh.
Dark Fondue, for once, felt like a moron.
Because Coffee Candy was a journalist. She had literally just explained to her that she had done her research on her. Of course she would have gone ahead and searched for evidence of her previous performance reviews, she had asked for the time to do it!
In that time she’d managed to somehow dig up every single embarrassing secret about her, all just through questioning and snooping. And those keen senses meant that any lie she told would be easy to expose with simple deduction. It had been all over the interview, the way she locked on to her embarrassing attempts at dodging questions, and always followed up with the right questions. In that way, she had fully exposed Dark Fondue for the world to see as less than perfect.
Witches be damned, she was a good journalist.
The woman sighed. There was no escaping this situation. It was time to face the fact that Coffee Candy was not going to be fooled by anything she said. Not like she had been at all the past hour, but at least back then it was worth trying.
She stood up straight, smoothed out her skirt, adjusted her hair, took some deep, cleansing breaths to calm her heart, and then the smile was back on as she sat back down in her chair. Right on time, Coffee Candy returned to the room, peering her head through the door.
“Come in.”
She sat down on her stool, gazing around the room as she tried to figure out how to breach the subject. “Soooo… are you okay now?”
“You heard everything, didn't you?”
“I never actually left, I heard you hit your head against the door.”
Another deep breath. Time to come clean. “So, that little review was from back in my early days. Baguette had made herself quite famous as a hard worker when she first came in, while I was still working as a secretary for CR. And I… got a little jealous. I tried to show off that I was as capable as she was by pulling my own all-nighter. Aaaaand…”
Coffee Candy leaned forward, and Dark Fondue knew that this part was going to be deliciously ironic for her to hear. “I passed out for about an hour partway through approving some shipment requests, and when I woke up and rushed through them, I ended up placing the wrong addresses. The Time Registry was flooded with garbage, Relic Management had some of its new equipment tossed into the garbage disposal, and the less said about Facility Management misusing the Time Recorders, the better. It took me a week of non-stop work to fix that mistake, yet by then I still received a reprimand from my supervisor, and he did not forget by the time performance week came around.”
Witches, that had been the most painful week of her life. And when that grade showed up, she could remember sitting outside the office staring glassy eyed into the wall for who knows how long recognizing the fact that she, Dark Fondue, had messed up. And Baguette had never let her live that mistake down.
It had been a harsh lesson for her. The lesson being that falling asleep was sinful and could lead to awful screw ups, so if she ever planned to work overtime to show off, she needed a good night sleep beforehand and plenty of caffeine to get her through.
Yeah, that was the lesson she was supposed to learn.
When she looked at Coffee Candy, the girl was giving her a look of understanding. The exact look she didn’t want, in the form of a gentle but sweet smile as she set aside the clipboard. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed about that, Dark Fondue. I used to make little mistakes back when I worked at the Cookie Herald even after years of working there, it happens! And I learned here that no matter what mistake you make, you can always work to improve yourself and get better. I think it's actually impressive that you managed to bounce off of that and continue to be the best employee in the TBD.”
Well, that did make her feel a little better. “Really?”
“Yeah! I think it’s admirable that you managed to fix your mistakes that well. I still need Baguette’s help when I mislabel my documents. I hope I’m as good as you someday.”
That was honestly reassuring. A little weight felt like it had been lifted off her soul, and Dark Fondue managed a genuine smile. “Thank you.”
That fell away fast, though. There was no way she wanted information about this getting out. “Now, please make sure you don’t mention anything about this to anyone. I don’t want more humiliation than you’ve frankly already put me through today.”
Once more, Coffee Candy looked completely confused. “... But you got an S, though? That’s not low at all?”
Ah, right. And that of course made her look like someone who couldn’t handle even the slightest amount of failure.
She gave up entirely with the facade, slumping over in front of Coffee Candy. “Are we done?”
The girl smiled shyly. “Yes. I’m sure you’ll get a good grade though, I promise.”
“Really?”
Coffee Candy didn’t respond. Just smiled wider and more nervously before backing away and skipping out the door.
It was over. Her face fell on the desk, and she let out a drawn out groan of pain.
When she raised her head, her eyes landed once more on the corkboard. Lifelessly, she left her chair to look closer at Coffee Candy’s review.
To think that an incompetent like her could do this. Strike fear in her heart, gain so much forbidden knowledge she could hold over her. It was… admirable. Attractive, even. She had let that first impression all those years ago color her view so harshly that she had blatantly ignored the real skill Coffee Candy had built before joining the TBD, and now that veil had been ripped clean off.
Wordlessly, she took off the B rank note, and slapped a different one onto the picture.
An S+.
She didn’t need to know. Never would. But Dark Fondue will always remember.
A day later, Dark Fondue sat in the employee lounge with an open envelope in hand. She’d been staring vacantly at it for several minutes now, the moment she had seen the contents having frozen her in place.
An A.
Her lowest rank yet.
Silently, but with the biggest smirk that had ever graced her face in who knows how many years, Baguette leaned over her. “I see Coffee Candy showed you no mercy.”
“Shut it.”