Work Text:
The phone is ringing again.
Honestly, when is it ever not…
Toshinori sighs, takes a long deep gulp from his coffee mug (which is disappointingly filled with tepid spring water due to his health issues) and slowly lifts the receiver from its cradle.
“Might Tower, Yagi speaking.”
The voice prattles on about a delivery schedule without so much as a hello, and Toshinori huffs in annoyance. Whatever happened to the simple kindness in the little things? A five second greeting never hurt anyone, and he would know.
Waving away the mental image of arriving to a crime scene in his All Might form only to be greeted by a miffed customer who hadn’t been greeted by the cashier, he takes another long drink of his water.
Damn he misses coffee.
Silently, he shifts the receiver between his ear and shoulder so he can pull up the accompanying invoice email sitting in his inbox and then settles in to wait for the windbag on the other end of the line to pause for air so Toshinori can interject.
“You haven’t received payment because the invoice failed to be processed,” he finally manages, resisting the urge to take one of his pens and click the topper repeatedly until he’s less pissed off. “And the invoice wasn’t processed because whoever sent it over, doubled and sometimes tripled every unit we’d ordered.”
The man starts spluttering excuses but Toshinori merely continues speaking over him, one hand waving expansively through the air even though he knows no one can see him. “Now I ask you, humble employee of Hero Mart. What exactly is a single agency averaging fifty employees supposed to do with 300 staplers.”
“Well, it- it’s All Might’s agency! The man is massive, how am I supposed to know the rate that he may or may not break staplers?”
Toshinori sighs. “Even if all of the non-All Might employees required two staplers each, that is only 100 staplers. Do you believe that All Might needs 200 staplers for himself? How much stapling do you think that the Number One Hero does, anyway?”
It is, surprisingly, a lot, considering that Toshinori is his own secretary. But the Hero Mart employee doesn’t need to know that. And it’s certainly not enough to break 200 staplers in a short period of time. Maybe one, if he’s particularly frustrated one day. Like today, for example.
“Listen, Sir, I don’t know your needs, I just supply what’s on the order.”
“I know for a fact that we only ordered 100 staplers. Just as we only ordered normal amounts of various office supplies. Now, we can continue arguing, or we can correct the order and be done with it.”
He is slightly tempted to let the 500 clicky pens go through, because if he has more calls like these, he’s going to be needing them. But that would be a waste of perfectly good clicky pens.
Once that disaster is settled— along with a note to not reuse that particular supplier, to avoid more headaches— Toshinori is able to refill his sad water in his incongruously bright mug and sit down to get some actual work done.
The phone rings again.
Toshinori sighs for what feels like the billionth time that day and picks up the receiver once more.
“Might Tower, Yagi speaking.”
“Oh great I got through!” a young voice, no older than eight comes through the line.
He just lets the kid continue onwards, taking another sip out of his cup. He really deserved coffee today. Just this once.
“I had some questions for All Might,” the kid states as though he would get to talk to the most desirable man in the country directly. If only he knew.
“I can record them down for him and email you the responses if you give me an email. He won’t be available to speak to you directly at this time.” He tried to be as professional as he could. He really did. He just wasn’t sure if the kid would actually really understand what he was saying.
He couldn’t deal with a tantrum on the phone today.
The kid audibly hesitates, mumbling and stuttering to someone away from the phone.
“I don’t have an email,” the kid eventually states like that would solve all of his problems.
“All Might is currently busy, so I can’t put him on the line.”
The kid now sounds frustrated, whispering angrily to the person next to him, the words too indistinct to pick up fully on the line.
Toshinori just takes another sip from his mug. The longer this went on, the less time he would have to do his paperwork, but it was at least an interesting reprieve compared to the average call he would get.
The kid huffs into the line again. “I want to talk to All Might now.”
“No can do, kiddo.”
“Well,” the kid sucks in a breath and coughs twice. Toshinori tries not to cringe away from the phone, even though he knows germs can’t travel through it. “When will he be back?”
Toshinori knocks his fist–still holding the phone—twice against his forehead. It doesn’t help center him, but it does make him less likely to yell. “You know what kid, I think he’ll be back on June 31st.” There is no June 31st, but Toshinori is hoping the kid won’t notice.
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, then, “Okay, thank you Mr. Secretary, sir.”
The click on the other end of the line is music to Toshinori’s ears. He shoves away from the desk, needing, just for a moment to step away. It’s strangely good timing, as his intercom sputters to life.
“Yagi, there’s a delivery man requesting access.”
Between the Hero Mart mix ups, and the resupply for the office snacks, he doesn’t even know what’s arriving anymore. Sugar, maybe? And Coffee filters?
“I’ll be down shortly George, thank you.”
“Anything for you, sir,” George replies.
Toshinori blesses the old security guard. At least someone has kept their manners today. He takes the stairs down to the lobby two at a time, emerging to see the delivery man dropping off a third stack of dolly-loaded boxes.
“Stop,” Toshinori says. His temples are beginning to throb. “What are those?”
“Um,” the delivery man hums, flipping through the sheets on his clipboard. “There are 400 boxes of sugar and three boxes of coffee filters.”
“...did you say three boxes of coffee filters?” Toshinori asks. “Wait 400 boxes of sugar?”
He’d needed 10 of each. He raises his eyes skyward. Oh supply gods, what had he done to offend thee?
This is all because he’d had a stamp made for his signature back in his prime, isn’t it? It’s because he’d never actually signed off on things himself back then that he’s being punished like this!
Toshinori calms himself with a quick little sigh.
Put like that he probably deserves it honestly. These greedy little shits probably have years of experience sucking Might Tower dry. Well, no matter. Now that he’s been using his extra off time to play his own secretary, Toshinori has since developed a special technique for dealing with crusty thugs like these.
He stares the delivery man down as he slowly reaches for his breast pocket.
“Hey listen man, I don’t want no trouble!” the man immediately flusters, taking a small step back. “I’m just doing my job, there’s no need for–”
Toshinori whips out the glasses he’d specially commissioned for the way that they reflect the glare of light the way Mirai had been prone to do when dealing with pesky reporters.
“Your clipboard, young man,” Toshinori says, one hand slipping the glasses onto his face while the other reaches for said clipboard. “I’d like to take a look at those delivery slips myself.”
Suffice it to say that by time Toshinori makes it back upstairs to the safety of his own four walls he is lamenting the fact that he’d already run out of All Might hours today leaving him with another three as his own secretary.
“I need a raise,” murmurs the man who signs his own paycheck. “This is worse than fighting villains.”
He reaches blindly for his water mug, cradling it in his hands like he can mind over matter it into doing some coffee magic for him.
“At least I can punch those.”
The intercom buzzes again.
He glances at the small clock on his wall before hitting the button to let the call from elsewhere in the building go through.
It wasn’t George for once, which honestly only spelled more trouble for him.
“This is Yagi speaking,” he says when the line splutters to life. He really did need to replace them, why were they so horrifically staticky?
“Oh thank goodness,” the woman on the other end of the line says. He isn’t quite sure who it is, but it’s honestly a toss up with how many employees they have.
He can already feel the need for an ibuprofen.
“Clara in the hiring department called out from work today, would you be able to handle two interviews and an onboarding today?”
He glances over at the pile of paperwork he’s been neglecting thus far. He really shouldn’t. But if no one else could, it was his responsibility.
“Is there no one else who can cover for her?” he asks in a fit of desperation. He really didn’t want to stay late another night just to do his paperwork. “Or perhaps we can reschedule?”
“I’m afraid they’ve all been rescheduled previously, to do so again would just be rude. There’s been a bug going through hiring.”
Great.
Just great.
He lets out the heaviest sigh of the day yet and stands up from his chair. “I’ll be down in five.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll send the files over for you to review on the way,” the woman, who he still didn’t get the name of, hangs up the line quickly.
The first interview is for a data management position on the 4th floor of the building.
His building doesn’t have a fourth floor at all nor does it even have any data management specialists. They don’t even host their own information, it’s all done through an outside company.
Hell, they aren’t even hiring for full time positions at all.
He doesn’t even bother actually wasting the lady’s time with an interview, he just directs her straight over to the management firm down the road and makes a note to ask someone to give them a call about a potential resume to look at.
The second is for a part-time front desk position, which at the very least sounds like a position they might possibly have open.
Toshinori glances over the provided resume. The qualifications seem to fit well enough, the man has been a concierge at several fancy establishments. He likely knows how to handle himself with dignity, at least. Is a hero agency the place for dignity? Only time will tell.
The man walks in and Toshinori is immediately hit with a wave of “Um, no.” Just an air of pomposity coming off of this guy. Slicked back hair and a designer suit, overpowering and expensive cologne wafting off of him before he’s even within five feet. Not the right fit at all for this agency, not at first glance, but…
Well, everyone deserves a chance, right? Maybe the man will surprise Toshinori. Maybe he feels the need to look so prim because it’s what’s expected of him at his previous positions, or even because this is the agency of the number one hero. Maybe, deep down, he has a good heart.
The man bows lightly. If he’s surprised at Toshinori’s sickly appearance, it doesn’t reach his face. He smiles, but it’s far from warm or friendly. It’s the smile of a man who thinks he already has this in the bag.
They’ll just have to see about that.
They get all the standard interview questions out of the way. It goes decently, nothing disqualifying about the man’s answers at all, but Toshinori can’t have just anyone as the first face of his agency. Sure, the guy has experience, but does he share the agency’s values?
It’s time to dig.
“Tell me,” Toshinori starts, letting something a little conspiratorial infuse his tone, “what do you really think about working for a hero agency?”
Mr. Goman blinks twice, and then gives a wry smile back. Toshinori thinks thank god for arrogant fools and then waits for the interviewee to dig his own grave.
“If you ask me,” Mr. Goman starts, leaning closer to the table like he’s letting Toshinori in on a secret. “I don’t really care about heroes. It’s an unbecoming profession, but my sister-in-law was the front desk person here before she got herself knocked up and I figured if that floozy could do it, I surely could. I’m the third in line for the Goman CEO position.”
He leans back proudly, crossing his arms across his chest as a smug smile blooms on his face. Toshinori stares at that smile and flips through his mental rolodex for the name ‘Goman’. Oh, yes, he remembers now. They’re the pharmaceutical family that ‘weren’t proven’ to be selling asbestos-laced baby powder.
Well, at least Toshinori’s villain instincts are well and truly intact. He thrusts a hand across the table, “Thank you for coming in today, Mr. Goman.”
Toshinori hides his shudder as the smarmy businessman shakes his hand.
“I’ll be waiting for your call,” Mr. Goman says, leaving Toshinori blinking after him. That was usually the interviewers’ line, was it not?
Well, at least Toshinori knows, with him as the interviewer, that man will never get a position at his agency.
Toshinori heaves himself out of his chair and makes his way back to his desk, already mentally compiling an email to Clara about everything she’d missed today so she can file it all away upon her return.
A quick glance at his watch while he waits for the elevator and Toshinori has to bite back a groan at the time.
Guess he’ll be pulling an All Mighter tonight after all.