Baby Blocks

Day 8: Monday

"Here we go, it's easy." Xu said as she sat Rinoa down at her desk. "You got two boxes - in and out. That's all you need to know. Oh, that, and when Cid calls you in, but he'll just tell you what he needs done."

"You call him Cid? Not Mr. Kramer, or Headmaster Kramer?"

"No. Why, is that what you call him?"

"No, but I'm not a SeeD, I'm not working under him."

"No, Cid likes being called Cid. He doesn't like to seem too authoritarian."

Rinoa nodded. So far, this job seemed easy enough. Xu had heard Rinoa was looking for a position in Garden to feel like she belonged, and substitute secretary seemed like a good option. Xu had been looking to get out of clerical duty and do some missions like she was graduated to do. Right now, she had been stuck behind a desk for so long she could barely take on a T-Rexaur anymore. It would be nice to get out into the world again. She missed the days of battles she had before she took this position.

"All right," Xu continued her tutorial. "Let's try one." She took a sheet from the 'in' basket and brought it in front of the desk. "Okay, here is a requisition form. The only parts of the form you need to know are the sales rep name, phone number, address, title, gross amount, net amount, allocation, deadline date, absolute deadline date, scope, and any collateral files that might be attached or in the comments field."

"Uh..."

"This is for a food order for the cafeteria, so we've got to compare the cost of what they requested to the budget allotment they are allowed for this month. Or sometimes it's by quarter, depends on the department."

"Yeah."

"So we enter it into the computer."

Xu crouched over Rinoa's armrest and typed her login then accessed some programs too fast for Rinoa to see to get to the financial manager program with white-on-black. "So we take the number from this box B here and enter it in, then we hit the availability forecast button, and..." she waited until a window with a bunch of numbers in a table popped on the screen, "We see that they're okay for that request. So we'll fill in the rest of the form in the blank boxes and send it on its way. Oh, sometimes you have to convert the number from Balamb measurement because this system takes Galbadian measurement. Okay?"

"Okay." Rinoa did understand. It was done a little fast, but she understood enough of it to get by. She was a smart girl, she could fill in the gaps by herself.

"Okay, so now we look at what they're ordering and compare it to the inventory manager." She brought up another program with black-on-white text and typed some numbers in the form field while clicking around. Rinoa was making careful notes in her head as where she was going. "So we're in the cafeteria inventory here, and we do a search, and we see that they're not approved for this order, but since they're requesting hot dogs, it's okay, cause they always run out of those anyway. This system really isn't meant for large orders like this. So we just enter in 1,200,000 gross."

"We're gonna have a lot of fat SeeDs," Rinoa joked.

"Ha-ha, yeah." Xu finished filling in the blanks on the form. "And now we hit submit and it gets sent on its way."

"To?"

"The food distribution center in Balamb."

"Ah."

"Also, we print out a hard copy for our records just so if there's any disputes we've got something hard to look at." Xu went over to the already printing machine and tore off the invoice. "And that's what the 'out' basket is for," she said as she slipped it in. "Later we'll put it in an envelope and send it off. Okay, take this one." She took another sheet off the 'in' box and put it in front of Rinoa. "See, if you can do this one."