A Fad Boundation
The burly builder gaped at the half-completed company retreat plans on the table before him. The luxurious resort was to be complete with room service, complementary poolside drinks and live music, the discarded ideas of a villainous vacation half-formed. The apparent mastermind was perched atop a chair on the other end of the office, talking prices with Powerline on the office phone.
"Hego!" Roddy gasped. "You're behind all this?"
"Okay." Hego said resignedly. "We're doing this now."
"How could you so flagrantly disobey my ten handy tips for a perfect corporate getaway in the midst of such a Christmas?!?" Roddy asked his long-trusted coworker. "I must ask you to cease and desist."
Hego lifted up his civilian disguise glasses, sending the twin ends of his waxed unibrow wobbling. "Could you move along? I have a lot of work to be doing today."
"I can't let you do that! I'm afraid I'm going to need to revoke your administrative privileges!"
Roddy Stewardship Roll: Revoke his administrative privileges.
3+29-27(The Old Country)=5
Hego Contest: 30+18+40 (Hall of Horror)=84
Utter Critical Failure.
Approximately two seconds after logging into his work computer, Roddy was blocked by a prompt for mandatory password change Hego had instituted, but with an attached link that only led back to the login screen in an endless loop. Around him a series of DEI patent coffee machines sprung from the walls and began their brew cycle, but only one managed to dispense a burst of the sticky black coffee before it gave an empty sputter and Karen began yelling at Roddy to make a new pot. A pair of off-duty employees descended from the ceiling on metallic strands, engaging Roddy in conversations about their marriages that never seemed to really go anywhere.
"Pathetic." Hego complained, looking over at the despairing lair-builder. "I didn't even have to use the spike wall."
"This pitiful chat cannot contain a true event planner!" Roddy declared.
Escape the Chat: DC 120
70+29-27 (The Old Country)=72
Failure
"Event planner?" Hego asked as Roddy struggled ineffectually to convey disinterest and preoccupation to his babbling coworkers. "You don't know the meaning of the words."
Hego stood up and leapt deftly to the ground, striding towards Roddy with a scowl on his face. "You might as well stop struggling. Whatever stunted pieces of these dolts' brains might have once handled social cues I had Jumba surgically remove. You'd sooner talk the entire building to sleep."
"Listen to me!" Roddy demanded, still fighting to be heard over Karen's shouting. "Perhaps I can overlook this flagrant violation for the time being, if you let me go! I need to put in a deposit for the quai- "
"I swear. If you say 'quaint convention center nestled among the charms of Europe's past', I will add your personal email to Greg's pyramid scheme chain letters and then you'll really be feeling the heat."
"...a walk through the boss's beloved childhood memories?" Roddy hazarded.
"For god's sake, work on your material." Hego complained. He took a moment to reach down into his briefcase, pulling out a platter of Bueno Nacho wrapped in cellophane and leisurely unfolding it.
"This isn't important!" Roddy insisted. "They need me!"
"Oh they need you, do they." Hego frowned, stopping a few feet away from the foiled furnisher. "They need you."
A flicker of doubt flashed across Roddy's features. "Of course! I… I'm the party planner!"
"The planner? In here, we throw spanners in the works of planners… but then, you've never really been a planner to begin with."
"What are you talking about! Of course I have!"
Hego fixed Roddy with a flat look. "Really. I'm sure you used to be a big shot in San Fransokyo, but what sort of fantastic events have you thrown lately?"
"I organized a delightful get-together in rural Drusselstein!"
Hego flicked a switch with one hand even as he shoveled Bueno Nacho into his mouth with the other. A massive projection on a nearby wall revealed that Alan Bradley was lying catatonic in the breakroom, his spirit too broken by the horrors of Drusselstein to bother removing the pitchfork from his sternum.
"How's that workin' out for ya?"
Roddy blanched at the realization that he may have single-handedly canceled out the positive morale effects of Hego's employee benefits plan, but continued onwards regardless.
"It's not my fault that the-"
"It never is, is it?" Hego glared. "Let me tell you something, kid. You know the greats, right? Martha Stewart. Mabel Pines. Hell, even Ned. All the rest. I grew up with 'em. Even worked for a few of them. Well, one." Hego cricked his neck. "You're not worthy of sharpening their number two pencils. They had vision, not that stupid, sappy, dimwitted stubbornness that makes you slack off work from loyalty penalties over a debacle YOU CAUSED! They woke up every morning and asked themselves 'how can I make the work a better place today?"
Roddy struggled limply with the clogged coffee machine, muscles flagging even as his heart fought to resist Karen's verbal abuse. "I've tried-"
"THE DAMN GHOST DID MORE THAN YOU!" Hego bellowed, pointing at Roddy accusingly. "He looked at himself, realized his complete lack of interpersonal skills, and started watching El Matador de Goddamor to bond with his coworkers over! Event planning is about getting your favourite performers on the line, it's about making the hard choices between rave music and improv comedy, it's getting Lizzy to show enjoyment on her face against impossible odds. That requires you to be mentally capable of recognizing that Drusselstein's convention center is a bloody field! Staff parties are what makes mindless nine-to-five work at Beuno Nacho worth doing, and seeing you playing at it like a snot-nosed five year old is an absolute disgrace to the men you look up to."
Hego clawed at the air in consternation, the grease from his nachos staining the floor harshly.
"That someone so dull thinks he could ever make an event to match my 2016 company retreat sickens me to the core."
At last, Roddy said nothing.
"You wanna plan your own event?" Hego asked. With the press of a button, pink slips were dispensed, firing the two talkative layabouts distracting Roddy. "Fine. Go on, knock yourself out."
Hego finished his nachos and turned back to his computer after a slight bout of retching.
"I'm certainly not gonna bother attending."
---
Days later, when Hego came to in front of his joyous coworkers enjoying a company retreat he could barely remember planning, he would feel bad about what he'd said to Roddy.
But he wouldn't say a word of it was wrong.
