Disclaimer: We don't own Star Wars, Star Trek, Ronins, or anything like that. Just ourselves and the Office stuff. Oh, Part three of The Tales of Mia is in production!
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THE OFFICE
This is just a little something to give you an idea of what this "Office" thing is that's in later, longer fics. I wish I could give you a clear-cut definitive, "It is this." Unfortunately, I can't. Hey sometimes even we get confused.
But before you turn away in frustration and disgust, we can explain to you this: we can explain what it is that Office people do.
To start off, Office people work for a Company. Whether or not the company has a real name, we don't know. We don't own it, we don't run it, we just pick up our paychecks every two weeks. We're pretty sure that the main purpose of the Company is to study people, but unlike the Q (for you Start Trek fans) we try to make a good first impression. Also the Q don't get paid - obscenely. The Company basically sends its field workers out to particular groups to hang out with the people for awhile. Most field personnel are in Department A (like us). Department A is made up of full-time employees (Jay'a) and freelancers (Shiane).
When a Company employee is first hired into Department A, There is usually a training period. Mine (Jay'a) was two years, and it was a rather pointless two years considering I didn't do any real work. (Q trained me. That might be why.) I did do intro work to prepare for my Star Wars group, but that was it. Anyway, after the training period (the length varies), the employee is assigned to his/her first group. When said employee gets there... well technically said employee isn't supposed to do anything. The general rule is that employees are not allowed to do major re-workings of major story lines. For example, if you're working Star Wars, you can't suddenly decide that you want to date Han or Leia. The two are an established couple. Even I had to follow this rule when Luke started dating Callista. I was very unhappy. I was even more unhappy when I found out that Luke marries Mara. But, as you'll be able to tell from my longer fics, I "fixed" that because my fics take place much, Much, MUCH later. My point is that I follow the rules too. Back to new employees. They're supposed to interact with the people, observe what goes on, and then write a report. But no one ever does that last part. Almost no one reads them anyway.
As employees gain experience, they aren't given assignments anymore. They can choose their own groups and come and go as they please. The reason for this is that the more you hang out with a group and the more of a relationship you build, the less time you have to start a new group. A typical newbie in the first few years could have as many as seven or eight groups: a couple major ones, two or three minor ones, and a few one shot deals. After a few years, this person may only have two major ones and a couple minor ones. A major group basically means that established action (movies, books, episodes, etc.) continue without you having to do anything. This includes Star Wars, Star Trek, and the like. A minor group is one in which after the established action ends, you have to put forth some effort (Ronins, etc.). You can play author as well as character and also the rule of noninterference doesn't apply because you can limit yourself as much or as little as you want.
As I mentioned before, Office employees get paid obscenely. It's pretty silly since we don't really do anything. To give you an idea, I make about $200,000 a year. It's not as if I do anything with it either. I take out food money and pocket cash and the rest of it sits in a bank account gaining interest. And gaining interest, and gaining interest, and getting another deposit, and gaining interest, etc. The whole thing is just disgusting. Though I suppose I shouldn't complain about that, given how much I do complain about various stupid people that I have to work with in certain groups. But that still doesn't stop my salary from being obscene.
Many people share groups. It's no big deal and most people end up doing it at some point. Shi and I share a couple of them. We share the Rouge Squadron section of the Star Wars group and the Original Star Trek group (though she's there a heckuva lot more than I am). We used to share the Voyager group too, but I ended up giving my part to Kypster so now they share that. We also mix groups. That just means that we tell people what we do, show 'em around the Office and let them hang out with people from other groups. They often become friends in their own right, being able to hang out even without the Office person being around.
Another question that's probably been running through your mind (or not) is, "If there's a Department A, is there a Department B?" Yep, there is. Dept. B, otherwise known as the Psyche Department, is made up of the people who are supposed to be reading our reports. My friend Sean, who works over there, says that when an employee stops sending reports, the psyche people just watch him or her work with the computers (more on that later). No one knows what these people do with the information they get besides analyze it. I think it's because they're studying the employees as well as the groups.
Everything else about the office is pretty much stereotypical office stuff: offices, conference rooms, coffee break rooms, lounges. Except the computers. The computers are one of the coolest things about this job. In addition to being the primary storage for everything, the computers can look in on almost anyone, almost anywhere. (Yes we do keep them out of the restrooms.) For example, if Shiane didn't know where I was and she wanted to check it out before she popped in on me, she could go into anyone's office (since we all keep each other on file), and set the computer for "camera mode". A prompt would ask for location or a person and she would click "person". Then she'd have to click on my name and she'd get a real-time image of whatever I was doing at the moment. It's very useful, and I've taught some of my more responsible group members to use it.
That's the essence of the whole thing. You gotta be responsible when working with this stuff and these people. Even if it turns everything into one massive pain in the butt, you gotta do it the hard way sometimes.
So that's the Office. I hope my explanations, such as they were, were good enough so you won't be confused about some stuff in our longer stories. I just hope you're not more confused than when I started. Anyway, we hope you enjoy our stories, even the especially lengthy ones.
-Office personnel
Jay'a - Office 10 – "Beware of Low Flying tigers"
Shiane - Office 9 - "You're Worst Nightmare Has Come True"
Shiane here! Most of what Jay'a wrote is true for everyone who works in the Office. However, there are some things about the Office itself that she left out, and some rules as well. But these are more complicated than would be wise to include in a basic explanation of the Office. Also, some things that are true for regular employees like Jay'a, aren't true for freelancers like myself and vice versa. But like I said, that's too much to go into in the basic explanation. They'll have to follow up later. Well, that's all for me! May the Force be with ya!