Amelia Bedelia on the Job

by Herman Parish

Amelia Bedelia was impressed. No wonder Mrs. Shauk was so tough. She had been a major in the French army!

  Sandy picked up a stack of paper and began handing out one sheet to each student. “Right now I am going to pass out—” She stopped and looked at Cliff and Clay, who were spinning around and around in their chairs.

  Amelia Bedelia sprang into action. “Help!” she hollered. “Sandy is going to pass out!” She jumped up and gently pushed Sandy down into her chair. Sandy was shocked speechless.

  “Penny! Quick!” yelled Amelia Bedelia. “What do we do next?”

  Everyone knew that Penny was going to be a doctor when she grew up.

  “Elevate her feet!” yelled Penny.

  “Impossible!” said Amelia Bedelia. “The elevator is way back in the lobby.”

  “Let’s get her feet up!” said Penny.

  “I’m fine!” said Sandy, as the girls each grabbed one of her legs.

  “Hold on!” said Sandy.

  “Right, hold on!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “One!” said Penny.

  “Two!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Three!” yelled Penny and Amelia Bedelia together as they lifted Sandy’s feet into the air.

  “Stop!” yelled Sandy. “I’m okay!”

  Just then, Mrs. Shauk came back into the conference room. “What in the world?” she blurted out, rushing to Sandy’s side.

  It took several minutes for everyone to get untangled and explain to Mrs. Shauk what had happened.

  “That was certainly an adventure,” said Sandy, smiling. Her hair was ruffled, but she didn’t seem mad at all. “Now, I want you to write your profile on this sheet of paper.”

  Mrs. Shauk leaned over and whispered in Amelia Bedelia’s ear. “Listen to Sandy and do exactly what she says. No ifs, ands, or buts, please.”

  Amelia Bedelia grabbed her marker and sat up straight.

  “Write down your name and all the things you would like someone to know about you if they were going to hire you for a job,” Sandy continued. “For example, what is your favorite subject in school? What sports do you play? Do you play an instrument or like to draw or paint? Have you done work for your community? Ever had a job? What you put down should be as individual as you are, like a fingerprint. I should be able to tell who you are right away by looking at your profile.”

  Amelia Bedelia put her head down on the table. She turned so that the left side of her face rested on her sheet of paper. Then she took the marker and carefully traced her profile. She drew from the top of her head down to the tip of her nose, made a sharp turn, then bumpity-bumped past her lips, took an upsy-daisy around her chin, and then finished up just a little way down her neck. She sat up and looked around. Everyone else was busy writing.

  “Cat naps are great, aren’t they, Amelia Bedelia?” said Sandy, shaking her head. “Are you ready to begin your profile?”

  “I’m done,” said Amelia Bedelia. She glanced quickly around the conference room, searching for a cat, but she didn’t see one.

  Sandy studied Amelia Bedelia’s profile.

  “My nose needs a little work, but there I am, see?” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “That’s totally you, Amelia Bedelia,” said Sandy. “And you certainly are a piece of work.” She smiled. “Now let’s get you started on the rest of your profile.”

  When everyone had finally finished, Sandy read a few of the profiles out loud and asked the class to guess which kids the profiles were describing. She read Amelia Bedelia’s last. The more she read, the higher her eyebrows arched. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, raising her hand in the air. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You walked dogs and won a prize at a dog show?”

  “Oh, the dog won, not me,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Noted,” said Sandy. “You got a wreath at the school Olympics, helped build a community park, erected a zoo in your backyard, and won a fishing contest, all while running a small business selling lemon tarts?”

  Amelia Bedelia nodded, along with the rest of the class, including Mrs. Shauk.

  “Well done,” said Sandy. “Your résumé is full of accomplishments. Keep up the good work. One day you may be the president.”

  “Of the company?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “Of the country!” said Sandy.

  “Sacre bleu!”* said Mrs. Shauk.

  When the students returned to the conference room after a bathroom and water break, they found a young man with really short red hair standing next to Sandy. The two were chatting and laughing.

  “Is everybody back?” asked Sandy. “Great, now that you’ve all got a head start on your résumés, you may be wondering how much money you’ll make when you start working and how you’ll manage your expenses. To answer that question, I am happy to introduce you to a close friend of mine from the finance department. This is Andy Miles, and he’s going to talk with you about his favorite subject—accounting.”

  The class clapped politely. Andy waved hello and heaved a cloth sack onto the table. It landed with a thud. The words FIRST NATIONAL BANK were written on it. He turned the bag over and dumped a heap of penny rolls onto the table. He rolled a roll of pennies to each student.

  “Hey, thanks!” said Teddy.

  “I’m rolling your pay to you because I work in payroll,” said Andy. “Get it?”

  “Got it,” said Amelia Bedelia, catching her roll of pennies. “Are we going to count beans and crunch numbers now?”

  Andy threw his head back and laughed.

  “I’m to blame for that comment,” said Mrs. Shauk. “My father was an accountant, so I shared those slang terms.”

  “There are lots of slang terms in accounting,” said Andy. “My favorite is calling money cabbage or kale or lettuce . . . because they are all leafy and green.”

  Amelia Bedelia imagined pouring salad dressing over a bowl of dollar bills. Yuck!

  “Now,” said Andy. “Getting fifty cents for free was just a start. Today you’ll get to actually draw a paycheck. How does that sound!”

  Everyone cheered. Even Mrs. Shauk was clapping.

  “Listen up,” said Andy, reaching into the bank bag and pulling out a handful of markers in all different colors. “When you draw a paycheck, that’s slang for withdraw. Most companies pay their employees every two weeks with a check that lets them withdraw money from the company’s bank account. That’s how people get paid. And the amount you get paid helps determine how much you can spend or save. Today is the only chance you’ll ever get to draw your own paycheck.”

  “Do you have any red markers?” asked Teddy.

  “AAAAHHHHGGGG!” bellowed Andy. He shut his eyes and put his hands in front of his face like a vampire who has seen the sun. Peeking through his fingers, he said, “Accountants are afraid of red ink. We use red ink only to show when money is being lost. We hate being ‘in the red.’ We always want to be ‘in the black,’ because that means we have made a profit.”

  Everyone grabbed markers and paper and got to work.

  Teddy drew a big dollar sign and the number one with a comma after it, then three zeros, another comma, three more zeros, comma, another three zeros, comma, three zeroes . . .

  “Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one . . . ,” said Teddy, counting the zeros.

  “What are you doing?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “Trying to figure out how big my paycheck is,” said Teddy.

  “Just count the commas,” Rose said. “A thousand has one, a million has two, a billion has three, a trillion has—”

  “How do you spell a skrillion dollars?” asked Clay.

  “I’m adding as many commas and zeros as I can fit,” said Heather.

  Amelia Bedelia drew her paycheck to look like exactly like money. “That way,” she said, “if I have trouble cashing it, I can always just spend it.”

  “Of course,” said Andy. “Now that you’ve drawn your own paycheck, the only place you can cash it is the First National Bank of Y-O-U.”

  “
Is that like an I-Owe-You?” asked Dawn.

  “Sounds more like a You-Owe-You,” said Chip.

  “Exactly—” said Andy.

  There was a knock on the door of the conference room. When Sandy opened it, Andy looked out and declared, “Gosh, I’ve never seen so much lettuce in my life! They have to wheel it in!”

  “How much is it?” asked Dawn. “Hundreds? Thousands?”

  “At least ten,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “Ten heads of lettuce.”

  He was followed by Amelia Bedelia’s mother, wheeling a cart laden with a giant bowl of salad. “Lunchtime!” she said.

  “Adios,” said Andy, giving the students a giant wave that included everybody. “Good luck, and don’t spend all that lettuce in one place!”

  Amelia Bedelia’s mother filled individual bowls to the brim with lettuce. There were interesting types, with a variety of colors and textures.

  “I’ll pass out . . .” Sandy started to say. “I mean, hand out the salads.”

  Amelia Bedelia’s father stood at the front of the room.

  “Okay, kids! I am Amelia Bedelia’s father, as all of you know. Thank you for visiting!” He began pacing back and forth. “We ordered pizza, but they are running late. So, we are going to start with salad first, like normal families do. Not like at my house, where we eat our salad last.” He winked at Amelia Bedelia.

  “You eat salad for dessert?” said Clay, snorting.

  “Yucko, Bedelia!” snuffled Cliff.

  “Enough!” said Mrs. Shauk.

  Amelia Bedelia’s cheeks burned. “No,” she said. “We just eat it after the pizza.” She closed her eyes and thought, Thanks, Dad.

  “I’m really sorry,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “Here you are in your salad days, and I was assuming that you all like to eat salad. How many absolutely hate salad?”

  Three boys and one girl raised their hands.

  Amelia Bedelia hoped this salad day would not last too much longer.

  “Thanks for being honest,” he said. “Would you be willing to try a bit of salad today?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now, I don’t want you to start eating until you get these two little containers of salad dressing.” He held the containers up, then began handing them out. One was orange and the other was purple.

  When each student had a salad and the two dressings, Amelia Bedelia’s father said, “Pour one dressing on half your salad and the other dressing on the other half. Don’t mix them. Then take a bite from each side.”

  When they had all done that, Amelia Bedelia’s father asked them to vote for their favorite flavor. The orange containers won by two votes.

  “Now I know that absolutely no one here plays with their food. But today I want you to play ‘what if’ with your food,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father.

  “What if what?” asked Dawn.

  “What if these salad dressings were athletes,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “What sport would they play? Think about that as you take another bite of each one.” The kids looked at one another and did that.

  “The orange one would play football, and the purple one would play soccer,” said Pat.

  “The orange one is spicier and different,” said Daisy. “It would play lacrosse or something unusual.”

  Amelia Bedelia’s father wrote that down and then asked, “What if these dressings listened to music? What kind would they like? What would their favorite song be? Who is their favorite performer?”

  Everyone began talking immediately.

  “Hang on, hang on! Take another taste, then talk,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father.

  “And don’t talk with your mouths full, please,” said Mrs. Shauk.

  The kids chewed, swallowed, then dove into a discussion about music mixed with salad dressing. Everyone had ideas and comments and strong opinions, and Amelia Bedelia’s father was taking notes as fast as he could.

  “If these dressings were superheroes,” he said when the room was quiet again, “what amazing power would they have?”

  “They’d make me want to eat salad,” said Dawn. She was the only girl who hadn’t liked salad. The boys who didn’t like salad nodded in agreement.

  “If you guys had either of these dressings at home, would you eat more salads?” asked Amelia Bedelia’s father.

  The non-salad eaters all nodded yes.

  “I always give credit where credit is due,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “These dressings were created by Amelia Bedelia’s mother. Everything was organic, including the lettuce she grew in her garden.”

  “Delicious!” said Mrs. Shauk, applauding. Soon everyone else was clapping. Amelia Bedelia was embarrassed, but in a good way. She noticed that her mother was blushing too.

  “Okay!” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “I think it’s time for lunch.”

  “Wait a minute. Aren’t you going to tell us what you do?” asked Teddy.

  “I just showed you,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “When was the last time you talked about salad dressing or even thought about it?”

  “Never,” said Teddy.

  “That’s right,” said Amelia Bedelia’s father. “Most people never do. But if you have great-tasting salad dressings like these, and you want people—especially kids—to give them a try, you’ve got to learn what kids like and want and how to talk to them. That’s what marketing is all about. It’s mostly common sense.”

  There was a knock on the conference-room door. Amelia Bedelia’s father opened it and held it open for a delivery guy carrying a big stack of pizza boxes. Amelia Bedelia’s father closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as the pizzas passed by him. “Naturally,” he said, “one of the best ways to get people to try your product is simply to give out samples. I can illustrate this again with the pizzas. Let’s dig in!”

  Mrs. Shauk, Sandy, and Amelia Bedelia’s father served slices to everyone in the class, then helped themselves.

  Amelia Bedelia’s father soon had them all talking about pizza as easily as they had talked about salad dressings. They talked about toppings and crust and cheese. Kids began recalling commercials that they liked and why they liked them. Then Amelia Bedelia’s dad began telling stories about his work. Amelia Bedelia was amazed at all the funny, weird, crazy, and ridiculous things that had happened to him on the job. He made her classmates laugh, and he made working sound like fun, instead of work. No one would ever guess that he had started off as a jerk.

  “Hey, Amelia Bedelia!” said Clay, slurping a huge piece of cheese off his slice of pizza. “Your dad is so cool!”

  Once lunch had been cleared away, Sandy handed out paper and scattered markers in the middle of the table.

  “Okay,” said Sandy. “We’ve been talking about work and our jobs. Now we’d like to hear from you. How can we improve things? What are you hoping to find in a job? What sort of business would you start? Write down what you’re thinking or feeling. Toss out a bunch of ideas so we can kick them around.”

  “Will they get hurt?” asked Amelia Bedelia. “Will you throw them out?”

  “Yeah,” said Angel. “Mrs. Shauk says that good ideas are fragile and need to be protected.”

  “Like a young plant,” said Holly.

  “Or a newborn,” said Heather.

  “You wouldn’t kick those around, would you?” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Of course not,” said Sandy. “Pardon my jargon. Tossing out ideas and kicking them around is how we describe sharing our thoughts and ideas and working together to improve them.”

  “Angel, I’ll be looking for a report on the difference between jargon and slang next week,” said Mrs. Shauk.

  “Don’t hold back,” said Sandy. “No idea is too wild or crazy. It may spark another idea from someone else. You just never know! Your ideas should be outside the box—whoops!” She covered her mouth with her hand. “There I go again, more business jargon. I have to go check my messages, but I’ll be back in a few mi
nutes to see—”

  But Amelia Bedelia was no longer listening. A curious look had come over her face. It was the look she got whenever she had a great idea, an urgent idea, an idea so bright that it flashed through her brain super fast and she could not wait one more second to put it down on paper.

  Amelia Bedelia was drawing so furiously that she barely noticed Sandy leaving the room or Mrs. Shauk circling the table.

  She drew four large boxes, one in each corner of the paper. Inside each box she wrote two letters: BP, OP, PP, and CP. Then, in the center of the page, she drew a circle so big that it nearly touched the corners of every box. In the center of the circle she wrote two more letters: IP. Around the lower rim of that circle, she printed THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX.

  Amelia Bedelia drew as fast as she could, cramming as much detail as she could fit inside the circle. There were café tables and chairs, a coffee bar, and an old-fashioned ice cream soda shop (the way she imagined it). There were gardens to grow healthy vegetables. There was a play structure made of huge industrial parts. There was a stage where people could perform, spaces to display things, and smaller areas with couches so people could sit and talk.