Myrtle entered her office with that eerie feeling of coming home after a long vacation. The Department Chairman, Dick Filmore, was standing beside her desk gazing mournfully at her empty chair, one hand on his hip and the other worrying an ear. He was the very picture of dejection, yet Myrtle almost hated to disturb the moment. "Good morning, Dick," she said gently.
He jumped visibly at the sound of her voice and stared at her, his hopeless expression changing to surprise, then to relieved optimism. "Myrtle! You’re back!" he observed gleefully.
"I’m here, Dick," she assured him, with her one good eye wide at the sight of her desk surface. It was every bit as littered as she had feared.
"Oh Myrtle, I’m so glad you’re back. You don’t know what this place has been like...."
"There, there, Dick," she comforted. "You better sit down and tell me what’s been going on."
The Chairman obediently pulled up a chair and sat down, then got up again, shut her office door, and returned to the chair. Meanwhile, Myrtle had tucked her purse into her desk drawer and made herself as comfortable as possible on her own office chair. Then her overwrought boss proceeded to spin a narrative of one small crisis followed by another all the time she was away. He had no sooner called her to obtain the solution to an administrative irritant, he complained, when some academic enigma would arise. On top of all this, the Dean of Arts had been lurking around during the past few days and two secretaries of other departments had been nasty with him. One had even demanded to know why he refused to make an administrative decision she had wanted promptly from his department. Myrtle was careful to get their names. This sort of thing made her angry. These secretaries and assistants knew as well as she did that at Upton College, the Chairmen of academic departments were not administrators, rather they were chosen from among the academics in the department to serve the college two practical purposes: to safely remove tired or stale tenured professors from the classroom for awhile, and to provide the appearance of administrative balance. Dick was right. These women were just being nasty.
Dick had been Myrtle’s Chairman since just shortly after she acquired the position of Clerical Assistant in the department and she thought he was a good one. He was a man who’d spent a lifetime conscientiously avoiding even the slightest suggestion of responsibility, so Myrtle had always been able to count on him to take direction well and never attempt to make decisions behind her back . As an added bonus, despite chronic nervousness when dealing with a committee of any sort, Dick Filmore somehow lent an air of dignity to the Chairmanship when outside the department. Overall, he had scarcely been any trouble since accepting the appointment and Myrtle was quite proud of him - and rather protective of him as well.
She patted him on the hand and thanked him for filling her in, then suggested he quietly disappear for the rest of the day and take some rest from the place. He was obviously tempted, yet reluctant. "But what if the Dean comes snooping around looking for me," he asked fitfully.
"I’ll look after him, Dick. I promise. Really... it’s okay. Unless you have an important appointment, you should really take a break."
He hesitated only a moment more, then suddenly seemed satisfied that Myrtle was really back. Grinning his relief and appreciation, he toddled off down the hall.
Then Myrtle got to work. First she dug out her departmental memo paper and hastily typed a memorandum to each of the secretaries who’d been disagreeable with Dick. She informed them that she was back on the job and graciously thanked them for their patience, understanding and courtesy to her Chairman during her absence, ending the notes with “it’s certainly comforting to know one can count on their colleagues in an emergency.” She was confident the sarcasm and veiled threat wouldn't be lost on the other women. That done, she extracted from her purse some personal note paper she’d brought from home and wrote a brief note of sincere thanks to another assistant who’d been kind enough to send a get well card. Then she called Winnifred Rodwell in the Resource Library to tell her she was back, and thank her for checking up on her by phone several times. They chatted for just a few moments though, since Myrtle was gazing at the pile of work needing attention as she spoke.
After hanging up, she had an inspiration and picked up another sheet of the note paper. She knew why the Dean had been lurking around the department. He was a real administrator and could quite conceivably be held responsible for anything that went wrong in any of the five academic departments under his jurisdiction. He was actually harmless enough, but Myrtle was no more comfortable with the Dean’s proclivity to lurk than Dick was. So she quickly jotted a cheerful note thanking him for the lovely flowers he and the Chairman so thoughtfully sent her while she was away. As she deposited the memoranda and the two notes in the office mail box, she smiled with satisfaction. There had been no flowers of course, but she was confident that upon receiving her note, the Dean would feel embarrassed for not having thought of it, chagrined and confused that Dick evidently had ~ and had inexplicably included his name on the card ~ and worried that Dick would eventually attempt to collect half the cost of the flowers from him.
Myrtle sat down at her desk to begin the task of sorting and stacking the papers strewn across it. Once he received her note, the Dean was certain to avoid the department in general and Dick in particular for many days, allowing her the opportunity to clean up the mess without suffering the unpleasantness of his skulking presence.
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