fandomhigh | Retail 101, Monday morning, All and Sundries

Edmund is once again sitting on a stool behind the counter.

"Currying favor. It's a grand tradition. Call the person who curries favor well what you will, sycophant, lacky, brown noser - the fact of the matter is that the person who kisses up to the owner and the customer the best is the one who is going to get the promotions, the raises, and the days off when he or she asks for them."

Edmund stands up and favors the students with a smile that, by now, most recognize bodes ill for someone.

"Today you will break up into pairs and will be competing against your 'partner' for my favor. He or she who wins my favor will receive an All and Sundries gift certificate. How to win? Insult your partner, clean my shop, come up with a way to convince Baldrick to bathe, do something to make me happy. Succeed, and you win riches and possibly early dismissal. Fail, and you will be here for the entirety of today's session and I will send Baldrick to recite the grand tale of his great-grandfather's boil to you - the unexpurgated version."

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Oh, not a good sign. "It's a cleaning spray you use. You know. To keep things clean."

From the rheumy blinking, one might presume Baldrick doesn't get it.

"See, it's this fascinating new thing they just discovered," says Jaye. "Things get dirty, and then they get clean, just so they can get dirty again. It's awesome."

"Not if they just stay dirty and skip the middleman." Baldrick apparently heard Blackadder talking business sometimes.

"But that's not as much fun."

"Plague isn't fun, Miss."

"...Sure it is. Have you ever had it?"

Baldrick shook his head proudly. "No. Because I never bathe. Great-uncle Baldrick tried bathing. He dropped dead straight away."

Although, with the smell, it's possible great-uncle Baldrick had been dead for a while and it was his dirt actually doing the walking.

Jaye blinks, and says, "My sister had the plague once. She. loved. it."

"Why haven't you had it?" Baldrick asked. "If it's so good."

"Never been lucky enough to catch it," she says sadly. "And I bathe daily."

Baldrick's brain broke a little at the thought of daily bathing. He may have stepped away from Jaye the way people usually stepped away from him.

"Plague would be awesome," she says wistfully.

~~Are you clinically insane?~~

"You're not right, Miss. You should get someone to let the bad humours out." He started digging in his pockets. "I have some leeches...."

~~A little.~~

"No, no, no. There's a difference between plague and bloodletting," Jaye says, taking a few steps back.

Baldrick looked disappointed but stopped rummaging in his pockets for the moment. "If you want plague, a few leeches won't hurt." He considered for a moment. "Well, not at first."

"See, if you can deal with leeches, why not plague?" she asks.

It hasn't occurred to Jaye that she's having her weirdest conversation ever.

Baldrick appeared to consider that for a minute. "Because plague makes you bloat up like a great black and purple sausage?"

Sausage... hadn't he once written a story about a little sausage named Baldrick?

"That look is so in right now."

"I'm more a trend setter," Baldrick said without a trace of irony.

"But you'd give the look a whole new... look. You'd make it better. You'd rule it. I bet you could even get an agent."

She's going to hell.

Baldrick gave that some thought and opened his mouth to answer, then looked confused.

"What were we talking about?"

[ooc: at this point he can be maneuvered to agree to being hosed down, or Jaye can beat her head against the wall of Baldrick's density for a while longer.]