I Am Me

Posted on Mon Mar 27th, 2023 @ 7:28pm by Chief Petty Officer Meredith Corden & Cadet Freshman Grade Poppy Koppelman

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 3: The Peace Ship
Location: Yeoman Corden's Quarters
Timeline: After Poppy's Accident; During Meredith's D7 Training with Thraxina

P.P.

Proud Plutonian.

That's what she had to keep telling herself: head held high. Walking along the corridors of the U.S.S. Midway in her ill-fitting uniform; ignoring the snickers of those who had heard all about her latest misadventure; ignoring the, even worse, well meant commiserations about her mishaps.

She was a crew member, doing her job. Representing her Planet of Birth. Well, planetoid, officially, but not for long, if she and her fellow 'Planetary Status for Pluto' activists got their way. All 72 of them.

Funny how, no matter how rocky her day, just the idea that she was representing that tiny rock in its eccentric orbit around the Sun buoyed her up, kept her going, got her to the end.

Case in point: she had been bitterly disappointed when she had heard that Lieutenant Thraxina had put forward the new girl in the Records Department, the unbearably pretty and talented Stella Golightly, to act as Ambassador Talbot's P.A. during the voyage to Nimbus III even though she herself had volunteered and been more or less promised the job. But after a good long cry on her bed, and a little bit of comfort eating, she had pulled herself together and done something about it!

Yes!

And here she was, outside Yeoman Corden's quarters, for her requested chat. If it was going to be a fight to get the P.A. position, fine let battle commence! Poppy versus Stella! Plutonians versus the Universe! She would be prepared!!

She buzzed the buzzer.

"Hello? Chief Corden? It's Cadet Poppl... er.. Koppelman."

"Hope she's not in the shower!" a snickering crewman chuckled as he passed by. Poppy ignored him. P.P.! So there.

She buzzed again.

Meredith was fortunately not in the shower. Or, if she was, she had managed to get out and dry herself before she answered the door for the young cadet. She smiled politely to Poppy as the door slid open. Meredith was in uniform. Quite proper. "Come in, Cadet. Have a seat."

"Thankyou, Chief. And thankyou so, so, so, SO much for seeing me! It means the world to me, honestly." she bounced in, no sign of her recent injury.

Meredith kept the small space neatly decorated and apparently prepared to receive company. She had a couple of plush, comfortable chairs, a couch, and a coffee table. "Can I get you something to drink, Cadet?"

"Better not, thanks Chief, I'm only likely to spill it." she shrugged. "Ooooh, your room's nice! I have to share with three other girls." she said looking all around. She waved her electronic clipboard in the air.

"You'll have nicer ones when you get your commission," Meredith said, although she knew that might not be immediately true.

"I brought this along because I wrote my questions on here, I didn't want to forget any" she said. "I won't be recording anything though, it's all strictly off the record." she informed the superior NCO.

"I need the real truth about being a good Yeoman!"

Unlike blinkered people like Lieutenant Thraxina, Poppy understood the importance, challenges and, yes, glamour of being a top-rate administrative assistant!

Meredith gestured Poppy to a seat on the couch as she settled into a chair and crosssed her legs. "Go ahead, Cadet. Ask your questions."

Poppy sat too and frowned at her clipboard.

“All right question number one: have you ever served as Personal Assistant to an Ambassador or other civilian Representative of the Federation and, if so, what are the duties involved?”

She looked up and grinned: all young, excited, inquisitive ears.

"No, I haven't," Meredith said, doubtless not the most interesting answer.

“Oh.”

“Question number two: if you were interviewing two candidates for the role of Personal Assistant to Representative Talbot, what would you prefer: someone with high grades, stunning good lucks, artistic talent and an outgoing personality or...” she glanced up nervously at the more experienced lady. “Or someone who is trying every day in every way to get better and better?”

"Maybe the second one, from those two options," Meredith said. "The hardest thing about being a personal assistant is that, in order to support your principal, you have to believe in them or the work enough that you can put aside your own ego and let the focus stay on them. No one is perfect at it and your boss and your evaluators should know and appreciate the work that you do, but, ultimately, you have to make sure the work gets done, sometimes even work that shouldn't be yours, and make sure the credit and the attention all goes to your principal."

Poppy listened to all this agog.

"Oh my gosh, b... but this sounds just like me!" the eager girl gushed. She repeated the lesson to make sure she'd got it right and to help her remember, counting out the points on her fingers.

"Believe in your Principle... Principle, I like that, I'd never thought of using that word before..." she nodded in awe at Yeoman Corden's expertise in this area "... and keep your focus on them. Make sure the work gets done." She nodded again, letting it sink in, but then turned questioning eyes to the command-gold clad woman.

"I think that's what I do anyway, but..." how to say it? "...I somehow do it in a way people don't like." She lowered her gaze to the floor.

"You probably heard how I stuffed up with the Ambassador at his welcome dinner. I... I thought we had a good rapport, you know? He knew I was standing there, attentively, waiting to see what he wanted, he clicked is fingers and pointed to his glass and I filled it and he didn't have to break off his conversation with the Captain. But then Commander Heartfilia hauled me out of there and bawled me out she said..." Poppy's eyes moistened a little and she sniffed. She was determined not to cry about the incident again, but the memory of herself crying at the time always seemed to start her off again "... she said I'd disgraced my uniform."

"Hmmm..." Meredith considered a moment. She would have been annoyed by the ambassador's behavior were she in Poppy's position but she likely would have acted the same. Not every little indignity required an explosive heart to hear such as she'd had with Lieutenant Thraxina. "Did she elaborate on why she thought this?"

Poppy looked uncomfortable and squirmed a little on the couch nervously wringing her hands together.

"I... I don't want to say anything bad about the Commander... she's been wonderful to me, really she has. But..." she frowned at the floor again, too embarrassed to meet Meredith's eyes. This felt like telling tales out of school. "I think she just really hates the Ambassador and was really angry at him and took it out on me.

She looked up again at Meredith teary eyed "I'm sorry, Miss Corden, that was a terrible thing to say. I take it back, I was just being silly. The whole wine thing was my fault. I... I should have handled it better." She felt better now... loyal again to her superior officer.

"But how do you handle that? I mean, if two of your superiors don't like each other, or give you conflicting orders: what do you do? At the Academy they made it sound like that never happens, like all the officers on a ship are each other's best friends and never fall out with each other. But now I'm here... well..."

"This is a private conversation, Cadet," Meredith reassured her. "If someone gives you an order that conflicts with another order, you inform them of that. If they still insist, then you're responsible for knowing who can countermand whose orders and in what circumstances. I'm sure you know all the rules. You just have to learn to be clear with your superior officers without seeming insubordinate." Meredith briefly wondered how Thraxina would have scored her on that during their first little encounter. "But I am familiar with the Commander and I am still not sure I have the whole story. What were her exact words?"

Poppy had been through that horrible scene in her own mind so many times, torturing herself that she could virtually repeat the think verbatim.

"She said I wouldn't get very far by being a suck-up, I had a duty to my uniform and I wouldn't get any special favours by brown-nosing the ambassador... I thought that was a horrible expression..." her lip quivered again, but she pulled herself back together. "And then she said if I didn't do what she said, I'd have a very difficult time on this ship. And then I had to go back in and they all stared and could see I'd been crying and... well, I just carried on serving the drinks and the food but I really just wanted to run to the transporter room and send myself into space." she moped.

To be honest, these were just the low-lights of that dressing down, but they were obviously the parts she remembered and which haunted her. Did everybody on this ship think she was just a creep and a bootlicker? Lt. Thraxina would have told her the answer to that one.

"And the only thing you did was get the drink? Did you say anything to or about the ambassador?" Meredith pressed. Then she paused and her tone softened. "I'm not trying to be indifferent to what was clearly a very stressful incident for you, but I need to know to give you good advice."

Poppy started feeling a little on trial with all these questions. Her face went red and she frowned as she tried to recall exactly who had said what about whom.

"Erm... I poured the wine and told the Representative what it was and then the Commander started shouting at him for being rude and he seemed to think it was funny and called her a lioness... no, tiger! And i tried to calm things down by telling them about my sister who's a waitress on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet and how she likes it when customers tell you directly what they want not being polite but confusing and... I think that's when I was ordered outside.

"But when I came back in, the Captain was ever so nice to me about it." she smiled, starry eyed.

"None of that sounds like being a suck-up to me," Meredith said, though it was unclear if she thought the Commander was being unreasonable (something she obviously wouldn't say even if she did think it) or if she thought there was some sucking up not being disclosed. Either way, she moved on. "You just have to know your duty. Unless they're your personal friends or you're a counselor, it's not your job to resolve personal dislike between crewmates, especially between your superior officers."

Poppy smiled happily. "You're so wise, Chief. I hope I can be like you one day. I bet you never get annoyed, or flustered or upset by other crewmembers." she looked admiringly at the experienced non-com. She wondered why she wasn't an officer: she seemed so much more together than some of the neurotic, bad-tempered or just plain loopy people with gold braid decorating their cuffs around this ship.

"Oh, I absolutely do," Meredith admitted, "and I haven't always handled it perfectly either. It's easier in theory than in practice. You just have to ask yourself if it's something you need addressed. It might not be. Sometimes being a professional means not being petty about the little things even if the other person is. If you do need to address it, do it respectfully at an appropriate time and place." Meredith paused for a moment and her expression sobered. "I'm not talking abuse or harassment, of course. You have no obligation to tolerate that from anyone, not a captain or an admiral or the President of the Federation. Anyone. If anyone ever tries anything like that, you should report it immediately."

"I wouldn't want to be a snitcher." Poppy shrugged. "Even on Lieutenant Karashka, she was pretty mean to me when I did that bad thing in the holodeck..." Most people had heard about the love-struck Cadet's Wild West scenario that had featured a cut and paste Captain Faust as the hero "... but I guess that was a punishment I deserved, and I certainly won't do it again. But Lieutenant Thraxina seems to just hate me for no reason at all. I never did her any harm but..." she looked at Meredith in horror all of a sudden.

"... Oh I'm sorry, is she a friend of yours?!" she gasped: she sometimes saw them together about some task or other.

"What did she do?" Meredith asked. In part, she was putting off answering the question about Thraxina. She was certainly fond of the young officer but it seemed an odd way to describe their dynamic. It was a little complicated.

"I don't know..." Poppy suddenly looked confused: Thraxina hated her, Thraxina made fun of her, Thraxina made funny comments at her expense: and yet, Poppy always seemed to mess up just at the time she was in front of her. Was it just bad luck?

"... I told my roomie A'Glosz, er, she's an older Tellarite lady..." Able Crew-woman A'Glosz would have loved that description! "... about Lieutenant Thraxina always being mean to me and she said 'it's because she likes you' - isn't that silly?"

"Lieutenant Thraxina can be hard on people she expects a lot from," Meredith said gently. "But people sometimes speaking harshly or even rudely is not really what I meant by abuse. There are things you have a right to say no too, even from a superior officer."

Poppy struggled for a minute, trying to picture what Meredith might be referring to: an odd picture of Representative Talbot standing over her with a whip, like Simon LeCree in Uncle Tom’s Cabin flitted across her mind, but then the penny dropped.

“Oh gosh, you mean like, a superior officer making a pass at you?” She gave a slightly bitter self-effacing laugh “well, that’s hardly likely to happen to me; but I guess for someone who’s really beautiful like you, that must be a real danger!” She wasn’t sure if this was an appropriate question, but she blurted it out anyway “Has that ever happened to you, Miss Corden?"

"Never with someone who had difficulty taking no for an answer," Meredith said, letting the strong implication that some have shown interest stand. "Why do you say someone like you, Poppy?"

“Well, obviously, I’m not gorgeous like you.” The girl frowned. “You’re pretty and have a nice figure and your legs are great! I would kill for your legs! And look at me: my legs are like matchsticks, my hair’s like a grease pit and even if I could get rid of this dratted acne I don’t think I’ll ever win a beauty pageant.” she sighed wearily rather than looking upset after this damning self assessment, like she had come to terms with being an ugly duckling.

“I got a few other problems, too. But Doctor Slattery says he might be able to fix those.” she revealed, a little more cheerily.

Then something dawned on her and her mouth gaped before she scrabbled to add “Oh, when I said you were gorgeous and had nice legs, I didn’t mean... I mean I’m not, well, you know.... I’m not peculiar, I’m not like Lieutenant Karashka!”

Meredith nodded. "It wouldn't matter to me one way or the other, Poppy. Maybe peculiar is not the best term." And then, gossipy, just for a moment, "Lieutenant Karashka, huh?"

Poppy nodded. "when I told my roomies that Carcrash, er, Lt. Karashka was making me do workouts as a punishment for my little holodeck mistake, Glozzy, sorry, A.C. A'Glosz, said I should watch out 'cause she was a 'hecking lady-woman and if she laid a finger on me she'd hecking 'fix' her'! Except she didn't say 'hecking' and she didn't actually call her a 'lady-woman' it was another word. And then later Strommi, that's a different roomie, said that Glozzy's sister is peculiar, I mean a Lady-woman and that Glozzy has a bee in her beehive about it."

Perhaps it was hard to translate all these nicknames and euphemisms and bowdlerisations of swearwords, but the Yeoman returned to the subject of Poppy's abysmal self assessment.

Meredith sighed and shook her head. "I don't like hearing you, or any woman, put herself down like that. I think you're a perfectly lovely girl."

Poppy gave Meredith an appreciative smile.

"You're nice, Chief, I wish I'd come and talked to you when I first came aboard. I think you're just being kind, but I appreciate it just the same. I only hope the panel or whoever decides on who becomes Mr Talbot's P.A. thinks the same."

"Say... I don't suppose you could talk to Lieutenant Thraxina for me, ask her to be nicer to me... or at least not quite so mean to me. Maybe you could convince her I'm not a total loss to Starfleet?" she asked hopefully.

"Maybe..." Meredith said hesitantly. She wasn't sure how that would go. Thraxina might listen, but she might just as easily snap at her for interjecting herself or, even worse, she might come down harder on Poppy for having asked. "If Lieutenant Thraxina thought you were a loss to Starfleet, she wouldn't waste time on you. If she's hard on you, it's because she has high expectations."

Poppy gave a philosophical smile and a little shrug “Believe me, Chief, I’d try and live up to them, if I knew what they were.”

"That you could ask her," Meredith suggested. "If you asked for ways you could improve, instead of complaining about her being mean, you might find her surprisingly helpful."

Poppy visibly gulped: that was like saying ‘try putting your hand in a vat of boiling oil, you might find it refreshingly cooling’! “I’ll try!” Poppy lied.

She refocused.

“Anyways, I was supposed to be here to ask you for information for this application, not to bleat on about my problems like a moaning Minnie!” she declared. “I think I’ve got enough now to make a good stab at it”

"Well, sometimes asking for help means sharing what you're finding difficult," Meredith allowed. "I'm glad I could help. She stood.

Poppy followed suit. These moments were always awkward, on parting from a non-commissioned officer did an officer cadet salute (no! nobody saluted any more! And who would salute whom anyway) shake hands? Wave?! What Poppy really wanted to do was throw her arms around the poised Yeoman and give her a hug of thanks for being so wonderful to her, but that was the most inappropriate on of all!

Instead she hugged her clipboard to her and smiled. “Thank you so much, Miss Corden, you’ve be so nice: if I am lucky enough to get to be the Representative’s Aide, it’ll be all down to you!” And with that simpering smile that Thraxina loathed so heartily, she made her exit.

Or maybe not quite so fast. Meredith didn't find these moments especially awkward, but did feel a bit of an obligation not to leave Poppy handling them so awkwardly. "Cadet..."

"Yes?!" asked Poppy keenly, spinning on the heel of her shiny black boots. She thought that she might have overstayed her welcome, so was flattered to be called back. She looked up at the flawless features of the blonde woman in expectant awe.

Meredith extended a hand to the young woman. "Good luck."

"Oh, he he, thanks!" Poppy beamed, swapping the clipboard over to her left so she could reach out with her right and clasp the Yeoman’s hand with her own. She suddenly felt, well, sort of more grown up.

 

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