Two days later, we welcomed Mewday and with it the new/12th month. This was important for mainly two reasons. First, the 12th month was the final month of the current/5th term, which meant that after the upcoming month, I/we would be welcoming the sixth and final term of my third year.
It was incredible how nearly three years had already passed since I began my internship here, and now I stood at the cusp of my last term at Oak Labs. A lot had happened during that time and I could definitely say that my decision had been a brilliant one.
While other people went to trainer school, I got to work with/for THE Pokemon Professor. Additionally, I made a lot, and I meant a lot of money thanks to the cuts I received as a result of the successful research I partook in.
The money allowed me to freely invest in my many projects, which included the orphanage and the sanctuary, without having to worry about anything, and all that without having to come up with money through other/alternate means.
Anyway, the second reason I saw this month as important right now was my Dad's birthday. His birthday was in exactly two weeks, and it was the first one, as far as I can remember, that we would be celebrating away from our own place. You know, with them being in Ferrum and all that.
Still, as I said, that day was still 2 weeks away, so I decided to rather focus on finishing the week in front of me first. The next few days I concentrated on the work I had chosen to take part in for this week, which was somewhat simple, yet incredibly important.
In fact, some people would probably say that it was not even considered a proper research project, but simply something that had to be done for the upkeep of the lab. Yet, I knew that this was in fact something that was accepted as research, and rather important research as that.
Well, long story short, I joined the diet staff members as they ascertained and documented the nutritional needs of the Pokemon staying at the lab before adjusting and preparing their diet plan. Considering the number of Pokemon at Oak Labs, the team was not small, and their workload was indisputably big.
Truthfully, this whole week/experience was rather nostalgic for me since I was not unfamiliar with their plight. In fact, I understood exactly just how much work these guys and gals had to put in to keep everything going smoothly. Having as many Pokemon as I did meant that I had been doing what they were doing for quite some time now, so I fit right in with the team.
Nonetheless, the week I spent with them was more than enough for me since doing the same job twice was a bit repetitive, and I was happy that I would be joining another team/project on Arcday.
Aside from that, I was a bit surprised when the vocational agency called me on Dialday and asked if I could come over tomorrow to go through the files they had collected on the potential employees I was searching for. I naturally confirmed that I would be there, so I left for Hope Town that evening and slept at home that night.
The next morning, after I finished my breakfast, I headed straight for the agency. We agreed that I would be there by 9 a.m., and I did not plan on being late. While I was walking there, I could not help but wonder just how successful of a visit this would be.
I had told the agency that I was looking for 4 cooks, 4 housekeepers, 6 regular caretakers, 4 live-in caretakers, 2 educators, 1 clerk, 1 live-in matron, 1 janitor, 2 handyman, as well as 1 gardener when I gave them the job, and I was curious whether I would be able to fill in all positions during this meeting.
I mean it had been about 12 months since I gave them the job, so it would be a lie if I said that I did not have certain expectations, especially since the possible wage options I quoted to the agency close to, if not more than double the average for each occupation/role. That was to make sure that the wage I offered was good enough to tempt those with good qualifications.
Anyway, I would now know whether that worked or not when I saw the result with my own eyes. When I made it there, I was a few minutes early, but that was better than being late, at least most of the time. I informed them of my arrival, and the clerk at the entrance desk asked me to wait for a moment before she proceeded to call someone.
Less than a minute later, my contact for the meeting today came to the entrance and welcomed me before requesting me to follow her to her office. Once we were seated, and had exchanged a few pleasantries, Viola took out a tablet. She left her seat and moved to my side before taking a seat beside me.
She tapped the screen a few times before she opened their agency's application. She demonstrated how I could switch between the occupation folders and the individual files in those folders, before opening the first file to explain the segments that could be found there, and I had to admit, that the files they had on the applicants were more detailed than I had expected them to be.
Nonetheless, once she was done with her demonstration, Violet handed me the tablet and allowed me to go through all the applicants that had made the cut so far. There were quite a few applicants for each job, with the most "popular" one being the cook.
Yet, I left that one alone for now and chose to check the most important folder first. The number of people that applied for the position of live-in matron was not that great. Currently, there were only 8 applications, and I swiftly read through all of them.
All 8 of them were decent, but to be honest none of them stood out to me. The "best" one among them, at least in my opinion, was a lady named Martha, so I "bookmarked" her before telling Violet that the others were disqualified and that they should keep looking for more candidates.
Next up, I went through the live-in caretaker applicants and I actually saw two that I would very much like to hire to fill in two of the four spots I planned for that role. The first one was a madam called Naomi Banks.
Naomi used to work at a nursery in Celadon City before she moved back to Hope Town with her spouse after he started feeling his age since he was a "pure" civilian unlike her, who had pursued a career as a trainer for a few years before hanging it up.
She may have not become all that strong, but most of her partners had reached the bronze stage and two of them were at the silver stage. Since she was a decent human being Naomi had bonded with her Pokemon, which meant that she had an increased lifespan, so when her husband was starting to feel his age at 90, she was still rather spry. In fact, she looked like a middle-aged woman.
Naomi's husband had wanted to spend his last few years in his hometown, so she followed him to Hope Town to accompany him for the remaining decade or two that he had to live. That had been 14 years ago, and it seemed that her husband was bedbound right now and was expected to pass within the year.
Such a situation was actually not that uncommon, and it was the reason I believed that one should try to partner up with people that could actually accompany one for most of their lives. It must be hard to watch one's partner grow older much faster than oneself after all, and I for one did not want to experience something like that.
Besides, this was not only true for relationships between civilians and trainers and the like, but also between trainers of different classes, since the lifespan difference became more prominent the higher one rose as a trainer.
Professor Oak was a prime example of this. Mrs. Oak died a few hundred years ago, while he still had a few thousand years ahead of himself. I could not imagine how he must have felt about losing his wife after about two thousand years of marriage.
Still, love did not care about logic, so situations like that would probably keep repeating themselves. All I could do was to keep myself from making the same "mistake" as much as possible.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Mrs. Banks had applied for the position of live-in caretaker as long as I was willing to wait for her husband to pass on. Since I was planning to give the agency until the end of the year to gather more applicants, I did not mind waiting for her to deal with her affairs first.
The second applicant that I took a liking to was a relatively young woman that in my opinion was overqualified for the role. Emi Kaneko first got a teaching degree in history, before interning at a primary school in Pewter City. At the end of her internship, she chose to change careers instead of working as a teacher.
She successfully applied for an internship at the Viridian City Hospital as a nurse, and in another 6 months that internship would be complete. Emi would be a qualified nurse when that happened. Well, a human-centric one, but considering that I wanted her to work in an orphanage that was even better.
Still, instead of actually working as a nurse, Emi apparently decided that she wanted to work for me. I was honestly perplexed by her choice, but I saw no reason to not chose her since the agency had informed every applicant that I was expecting them to work for at least 4 years once they accepted the position.
Well, I tagged the two as accepted and told Viola to inform them that the starting date was tentatively set to the 1st month of 2185, so roughly halfway into my practical year. That was the day I was planning to sign the employment contract.
Nonetheless, even with those two slotted for the position I still needed another 2 live-in caretakers, so I was hoping the agency would find a few more promising candidates by then.
After the live-in caretakers, I looked at the regular caretaker folder, and unlike the live-in ones, I accepted males for the job of regular caretaker. Actually, I was definitely going to fill in half of the 6 slots with males, and as luck would have it I managed to find two qualified male applicants and one qualified female applicant to fill in 3 of the 6 slots.
I looked into the educators next, and I ended up choosing a married pair of retired teachers for the job. Lilian and Marshal Alsen used to be actual teachers. The reason they applied for the job was that they were unable to have children of their own, so they had been contemplating adopting one after they retired, when Lilian brought up the idea of working at an orphanage so that they could support as many kids as possible.
I saw nothing wrong with their reasoning, which was why I chose to accept them. Like with the previous ones, I asked Violet to inform them that the contract signing would take place at the start of 2185. After the Alsen couple, I only found one more person that I wanted to hire and that was someone that applied for the job of the gardener.
It was a slightly older gentleman called Avery, who definitely had the necessary skills for the job. In fact, the man was someone highly overqualified for the job as well. There were some pictures of the stuff he did with greenery and that was some attraction-level skill he had right there.
Not only that, but Avery also used to be a trainer at some point in the past, and by the time he "retired" from trainer-dom, he was a Senior class trainer. Currently, his team was helping him with his job, and I had to admit that they were rather well-suited for the job.
He had a Sandslash, Vileplume, Jumpluff, Quagsire, as well as two Beautifly, and according to what he shared, all of them were at the (high) silver stage.
Apparently, he was aware that most people would be surprised by his decision to apply for the job, so Avery justified his decision to the agency by saying that he liked gardening and he liked children so he chose to apply for the position as soon as he heard about it since it would allow him to "work" on his hobby while also being able to spend time with kids.
He even added that he wouldn't mind showing some of the kids the ropes to gardening if they showed any interest in the job. Considering all that, not accepting him would have been stupid of me, so I marked him as accepted as well.
After adding him to the list of accepted applicants, I thanked Violet and asked them to keep looking for more applicants so that I could fill in the rest of the open positions.
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