A field agent of Those Stories, code-named Joshua, sent me the following report from inside Elevated Industries (ELIN). It’s not known what ELIN does because only the board room and CEO’s office are above ground. The building extends deep into the Earth in an undisclosed American city.
Anyway, Joshua was working at his desk. He is always unsure what he should work on, but he was recently promoted to this office. Out of the monotony, someone from HR walked into his office, closed the door and sat down.
“Did you get yesterday’s memo?” HR asked him. Joshua moved some papers around on his desk. All of the papers were memos.
“Which one?” Joshua asked
“About graphs.”
“Oh yes, from the CFO. The short one,” Joshua said, pulling it from the pile. “It says, ALL GRAPHS must now go up.”
HR produced an easel out of thin air and placed a graph on it. The graph was labeled workplace injuries over time, and the line was clearly going down.
“We need your help fixing this.”
Confused since this seemed like a massive accomplishment for the company, Joshua thought for a moment. “Why don’t we just change the graph to say workplace safety over time, and then it will go up?”
“The memo didn’t say anything about changing the graphs,” HR replied, “We were wondering if you would be willing to get injured on the job?”
“What?”
“It doesn’t have to be a major injury, but all graphs must go up. And this is our graph. Each department has at least one. I’m sure your department has a graph.”
Joshua was pretty sure that his graph was labeled Memos Per Day, but he wasn’t sure how many more memos they could even produce.
“What about your stapler?” HR asked, “Would you be willing to staple your hand?”
“Am I going to get compensated for this?” Joshua asked, throwing his stapler into a desk drawer as a precaution.
“Of course. Your injury payment will make our employee payout graph increase too.” HR pulled another graph out from nowhere and put it on the easel. It was the same as the Employee Injury graph, other than the labels.
Joshua asked HR to wait a moment and then typed up a quick memo. He printed it and handed a copy to HR. The memo said Joshua will sue Elevated Industries (ELIN) because HR tried to get him hurt.
“That should make your lawsuit quota go up,” Joshua said. After a lot of training before joining Elevated Industries, Joshua had learned that HR people will avoid lawsuits at all costs.
HR didn’t say anything and got up. HR opened the door and walked out. He heard HR say to Dylan, the man in the office next door, “We need to talk.”
A few minutes later, Joshua heard a yell and a crash. He went outside and saw HR lying on the hallway floor with a staple in his forehead.
HR gave Joshua a thumbs up.
Mission Accomplished was the title of the memo Joshua wrote about the event. And he promptly forwarded me a copy.