Before the ink

Part 13

Norman screwed in the new lightbulb, then rushed out of the room. Sammy tilted his head in confusion. "How come you two are able to figure it out?" Sammy squinted at them.
Henry and Bendy shrugged. "I swear to god if it's Susie, I'm going to have to advise him to literally anyone else." Sammy said.
Bendy snickered. "It's not Susie, don't worry." Henry reassured him. "Oh, can you just tell me who it is?" Sammy whined.
"Nope, but we could give ya a hint." Bendy said. "What?" Sammy asked. "I said we could, not that we would." Bendy laughed.
Sammy slumped. "You guys suck. I'm just going to get back to work." Sammy turned to leave. "Fine, fine. Ya wanna hint? It's not a she, it's a he." Bendy smirked.
Sammy froze. "Huh? That does not narrow it down, there's way more guys here than girls." Sammy sighed.
"He'll never figure it out." Henry said as the two watched him leave. "I know, some people here are jus so oblivious." Bendy side glanced at Henry.
The animator shrugged. He went back to his office and sat at his desk, Bendy crawling into his lap and watching him draw.
Meanwhile, Joey was frantically pacing his office. His latest 'big idea' was actually a big failure. The studio was slowly going bankrupt, and within the next year, all the workers would be jobless.
Joey included. He'd be labeled as a big failure of a cartoon creator, and his life and reputation would be ruined. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The other workers, sure, they'd pick their lives up easily, they could go and work at other places. They could continue being happy as they were now.
But Joey, oh no. He'd be shunned by every other studio, the laughingstock of cartoon production of all studios.
So what did he do? He pulled a Joey and planned the most horrid thing he could. And he wasn't going to fail this plan, not like he failed every other one.
Joey left his office and just walked around the studio to check if everyone was doing their jobs.
First he went to the music department. He peered through the crack in the barely opened door.
There were two chairs set up facing each other in the middle of the room. Norman was sitting in one of them.
Then Joey heard Sammy's voice. "Okay, I found two that are in good condition and already tuned." He said, sitting into the chair in front of Norman. The musician carefully handed him a guitar.
"Okay, if you want to learn how to play the guitar, first you have to learn all the notes and you'd start doing songs by practicing small ones like nursery rhymes." Sammy explained.
Norman smiled and nodded. Joey grew annoyed at seeing the two having fun instead of doing their jobs. He slammed the door open.
Both of them jumped and looked over at Joey in alarm. "What do you think you're doing?! It's work time, not time to learn about fiddles!" Joey shouted, storming out the room to go yell at everyone else that wasn't doing their job.
Sammy and Norman stared after him. "It's a fucking guitar, not a fiddle." Sammy grumbled. "Joey sucks." Norman huffed.
"At least he didn't fire us." Sammy said. Joey came upon the unfortunate dwellers of the Lyricist department next.
Jack was sitting in his desk, half working and half talking to Wally, who was half cleaning a spill from a pipe, and half chatting.
"Not talking on the job! Just do your damned work!" Joey barked. The two jumped. "Sorry." They said at the same time.
They went silent and turned their full attention on their work. Joey skulked his way over to the toy department.
Shawn at least was working. But Joey was in a bad mood. The Irish man stuck his tongue out to the side as he focused on making a bendy dolls smile straight.
Shawn put his brush down, examining the smile. "It's not straight, it's crooked." Joey growled. Shawn looked over at his boss.
"It's actually not..." he showed the doll to Joey. The man barely glanced. "It's crooked, put more focus into them and stop daydreaming or whatever." Joey scowled.
Shawn's normal smile turned sad, feeling his moral being crushed. "But I was focusing, and this ones actually quite on point." Shawn argued.
Joey found Shawn the easiest to put down, as the toy maker had sensitive feelings. "No, it sucks, you're lucky no one else wants the sad job of becoming toy maker, otherwise I would have you fired and replaced in a second." Joey said.
Grant was standing in the doorway and saw the whole thing, knowing how sensitive Shawn could get.
"Uh...mister Drew, with all due respect Shawn is the toy maker, and you are not, and also don't know anything about toy making and shouldn't criticize him on something that you can't even do." Grant said, wishing he could slap Joey.
Joey huffed and left to go yell at some more people. Shawn frowned sadly at his desk, all his spirit being crushed by Joey.
Grant walked over and leaned on Shawn's desk. "Shaaaawn." He poked his friend. "C'mon, don't be sad. Joey doesn't know anything about toy making, but you know pretty much everything about it." Grant tried to cheer him up.
Shawn didn't move, showing Grant had failed. "He's right, it is crooked, they all suck." Shawn sighed. "No it's not, it's a good smile." Grant said.
Not working. Shawn was still very sad. Grant knew one thing to cheer the Irish man up was hugs, but the reason he hated hugging Shawn was because it would make him blush.
But, he hated when Shawn was sad, so against his better judgment, Grant wrapped him up in a hug. Shawn hugged him back.
At least this seemed to cheer the toy maker up. Grant often wondered why only hugs from him seemed to cheer Shawn up.
He had an idea of why, but ignored it, assuming it was probably because he was Shawn's friend.
Meanwhile Joey had locked himself up inside his office, starting to plan his first move for his new plan.