I was in the conference room with the Kirkpatrick Advertising’s account team waiting for the conference call with a new client. We were expecting the call at 1pm, five minutes from now.
“Jake, you got a call—” said the receptionist before I cut her off.
“Put it through.”
“I think you should take this one in private. It’s—”
“Just put it through.”
The call came into our phone system which was on speaker phone so that everyone could hear.
“Mr. Thayer, good afternoon. This is Mr. Jonathan Bane, the principal at your niece’s school.”
“What happened? Is Christine okay?”
“She’ll be okay. She got in a fight and I need you to come in to talk.”
I looked over at the account rep. He whispered something to someone else on the team, who promptly left the room, and then he mouthed to me that I should go.
“Mr. Bane, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I walked out of the conference room as Marie was coming in. I told her what had happened and she told me to go. She would help run the conference call.
I arrived at the school a bit pissed at Christine. That quickly faded when the principal brought me to see her in the nurse’s office and I saw the bruise on her face.
“What the hell? Christine what happened?”
“Maybe we should talk in my office,” offered the principal.
I turned to Mr. Bane and let him know who the boss was.
“Maybe you should give me a couple of minutes to talk to my daughter without your interruptions.” I kept looking at him until he stepped back a bit.
“I’m your niece not your daughter,” whispered Christine.
“Don’t correct me. I’m the adult around here,” I responded softly. “Now tell me what happened?”
She told me how a girl had insulted her mom and she had responded I kind. The girl had then delivered the first punch and as she was cocking to throw a second punch, Christine had hit her in self defense.
I put my arm around her and walked her to the principal’s office. Mr. Bane thought it best that we talk alone so Christine sat outside the office with the secretaries.
“Mr. Thayer, Christine got into a fight today in the cafeteria. Both she and the other girl blame the other for starting the fight. Either way it doesn’t matter because I’m going to have to suspend both girls for fighting.”
“So this fight happened in the cafeteria? Did you talk to anyone else? I’m sure someone else saw the fight and can tell you who really started it.”
“The friends of each of the girls will all blame the other girl. I can’t go through a prolonged investigation when I already know who the two girls who were fighting were.”
“Oh, so starting a fight, which is in fact committing assault, is punishable the same way as self defense?”
“Well, no—”
“Did you call the police Mr. Bane? I’m sure they won’t mind investigating this crime since you’re too lazy to do it. You do know that not reporting an assault on a minor is a crime,” I said, slowly raising my voice.
“I thought that would be over doing it—”
“Are you teaching our kids that it’s okay to commit a crime by not reporting it if you are the person in charge? Christine was defending herself and I don’t see why she should be punished for that. What choice did she have? Was she supposed to let the other girl hit her over and over?”
“Well, no—”
“Maybe I need to call my lawyer,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.
“Mr. Thayer, please. I’m sure we can work something out.”
Ten minutes later I was walking out with my niece in tow. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders as we exited the building.
“I’m sorry. I think you scared Mr. Bane. What did he say?”
“Three day suspension but it doesn’t go on your record. You’re lucky. I need to go back to work so I’m taking you with me, okay?”
“Alright.”
I walked into the work and was confronted by Marie as I was making my way to my office.
“Jake, in my office, now. And bring Christine.” She didn’t sound too happy.
We both walked in and sat in front of Marie’s desk she was sitting behind the desk leaning forward on it. She was very upset about something.
“Christine,” Marie said softly, almost sounding as she was containing her anger, “your uncle is a very important part of this company. Many of our clients ask for him by name. Which is why one of our new clients was very upset when he wasn’t available this afternoon for a scheduled conference call. Jake, you have to call them and make this all good.”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll smooth it over.”
“Christine, you’re mom was one of the best employees I’ve ever had here. I mean, she was golden. I see a lot of her in you but fighting? Come on, you know better. So what’s the punishment?”
“She got a three day suspension,” I said.
“Alright, well since Jake can’t stay home and watch you because I need him here, you, Christine, will be my new unpaid intern for the next three days. I expect you to come in at eight and work until five with one hour for lunch. As an intern everyone here has more authority than you and you will do whatever they ask you to do. Maybe this will teach you what the real world has in store for you without an education.”
I walked out of the office and headed down to see one the account reps.
“Roger, you remember Christine, Anne’s daughter,” I said. “She our new intern for the next three days. Don’t you have those reports you need to make copies of?”
“Yeah. Oh man, the timing couldn’t be better.”
I left my niece with Roger while I went back to my office to call my client. After about an hour on the phone they understood perfectly why I hadn’t been available for them. They were happy that I was going to have Christine work off her punishment. I also got some idea of where they wanted to go with their strategy and even offered some ideas off the top of my head. I made an appointment to have us go see them in a couple of weeks and then got off the phone. Before I left for the day I went to see Marie.
“Thank you for that. I hadn’t even thought that far as to what I was going to do with her being at home,” I said.
“You know I got suspended in high school too. My dad made me work off my punishment here, as well as work the whole summer for free. Christine is lucky she got off with only three days.”
That night I had Christine go to bed early. She would have a full day at work and would need her rest. Before she went up to her room she came into the kitchen to talk while I cleaned.
“Uncle Jake, thank you for standing up for me at school today. I thought you were going to be mad at me. You surprised me. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.” And then she kissed me goodnight for the first time since she had been a small child.
It was those tiny victories that made me feel like a giant. If it hadn’t been so late I would have called Karen and bragged. Maybe I would get a chance tomorrow.