Microstory 2550: Payroll Specialist

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Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Boring! I know, my job is boring. I’m not gonna lie. I hear my co-workers talk about how they’re making a difference in the world, and—oh my God, that makes it sound like I don’t think it’s true—it is true, it’s just not really true of me. Math is math, and if the math ain’t mathing, I’m not doing it right. I could work for any other organization, and my daily work would be the exact same thing. Is it more fulfilling to know that I’m paying people who are there to help heal people? No, not really. I guess I just feel pretty removed from it. One thing is that I regularly work from home. They offered me a suite to share with someone, but that’s not really my thing. I don’t need to live where I work. I actually don’t want to. I think it’s better for my work-life balance if it’s somewhere I go, and somewhere I then leave. I know, that sounds contradictory to the fact that I sometimes work from home, but whatever. It just feels different to me. I guess working where you live is not the same as living where you work, you know? There are others who seem to feel the same way. I know one of the financial evaluators who lives a thousand or so miles away, and actually hasn’t stepped foot in this building before. It might go against the “culture” of us all being one, big happy family, but it’s real. I’m sorry, I sound so ungrateful and antisocial. I’m really not. Again, I just don’t really feel a part of it. It pays well, and has great benefits. I mean, no one has really said this, because I think there’s a legal issue, but if I were to get sick, I’m pretty sure that Landis would heal me on the DL. It would be free of charge, with no application process, and no waiting. Like I said, I don’t know that, and I’ve never seen proof. All I know is that my chess buddy on the maintenance team was so sick in the middle of his shift that he had to go back up to his room. Next day, he’s back, totally fine, and won’t talk about it. I think he signed an NDA, because they don’t want the bad publicity of giving special treatment to its employees. He’s not even technically an employee, but a contractor, which may be why they have to keep it quiet, but it also more strongly suggests that I would be in an even better position. Hopefully I won’t need it, but it’s a perk that only a couple hundred people in the world even might have. Okay, I gotta get back to telling this computer program to do all the work for me, because it’s 2025.

Microstory 2520: Guide

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Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Once you walk into the building, and get checked in with one of the greeters, you can ask me for help. There are a ton of us, patrolling and stationed strategically around the floor, ready to provide assistance. There’s at least one in every waiting room, one in the auditorium, several in the mainline. Outside, inside, topside. If you’re thirsty, we’ll get you water. If you don’t know where the nearest restroom is, we’ll escort you there. If you were in line when you had to step out, we’ll have a queuer keep track of where you were, and put you back in it at the right place. We can also answer questions about the history of the Foundation, and behind-the-scenes information. We know where you need to be, and where you’re going, and who you will be dealing with. Guides are friendly, knowledgeable, and always ready to take action. We get a ton of steps, so there’s one advantage. Since our job requires moving around so much more than others, we enjoy a very special exception. We’re entitled to injury healings. Hold for gasps. For the most part, Landis does not handle cuts and broken bones. They may hurt, and they may even be life-threatening, but because of the acute time constraint involved in the most severe cases, the responsibility falls squarely on traditional medicine. It will get your application immediately rejected, even before you upload your medical and financial records. Some applicants have actually gotten real upset about that, because they also had a chronic illness, and figured they should include the normal injury along with it to be the most accurate. Don’t do it. Anyway, that’s not really the point. I’ve kind of made it sound like guides and queuers are getting injured left and right, but really, it’s more like a benefit in our insurance package. It’s there if we need it, and while it has happened before, we rarely need it. Mostly, the only people who ever had to use it were either exhausted or dehydrated. I recall one guy who twisted his ankle, and another was straight up punched in the face by a patient companion who was trying to defend her mother against another patient. But those were extreme circumstances. If necessary, we are allowed to cut in line to get it completed, but that’s only when we can’t continue our shift without it. Since it almost never happens, it might seem like a small thing, but I think it speaks to the culture of our organization. The leaders understand that there are exceptions to every rule. It’s important to maintain order and fairness, but that doesn’t mean being overly strict and inflexible. It’s also just kind of cool being a little bit more special on a staff of a very special Foundation.

Microstory 2169: Refund and Take it Down

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Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

I came home today, a day earlier than we thought I would. I’m still not well enough to report for jail tomorrow, which means that I’ll incur some extra time to make up for it, and also as a punishment for missing it, but it wouldn’t make sense for me to go back when I’ll have to spend the entire time in the infirmary. I’m much more comfortable at home, and I’ve recovered enough to start taking care of myself for the most part. My neighbor will be checking in on me every once in a while, which she doesn’t have to do. My parole officer will be coming over too as a sort of welfare check. I think my therapist will show up, and not charge me for a quick session, but I’m not about that. I pay my way, I’ll tell you. I took sick leave from work, because I can’t keep my eyes open for long enough to get anything done, but hopefully I’ll be fully ready to go on Monday, so I will have only missed a week. It’s not even that I’m sleepy or tired. Have you ever seen anyone get hypnotized, even if in fiction? The hypnotist will describe weights on their subject’s eyelids. It kind of feels like that, but it also sort of feels like it doesn’t matter whether my eyes are open or not, I still can’t see very well. My surgeon thinks that that has to do with the medication that I’m on. Blurred vision is a known side effect of at least two of them. I’m gonna stop taking the narcotics, though. I’ve never done well with them, I personally can’t understand why people get addicted to these things. I’ve had to take multiple kinds over the years, and every single one of them has made me feel like crap. I’m going to be in a lot of pain while I rely solely on over-the-counter pain meds, but it’s nothing I’ve never experienced before. Pain and I have an understanding. It gets to do whatever it wants to me, and in exchange, I get nothing. I do want to circle back to that thing about my therapist. Not because of my therapist, but because of the money thing. Apparently, one of my readers started a CauseTogether.hope page for me. I want you to know that I have absolutely nothing to do with this, and I am currently working with the platform administrators to have all backers so far fully refunded, and shut the page down. I neither want nor need your charity. I’m making plenty of money, and I will be able to pay my own hospital bills. I shouldn’t have any lost wages from my time off, because the company I work for has great benefits. Really, please do not try to give me money. A nurse suggested that I could just regift it to charity, but no, I don’t want to reward this behavior. If I can’t get the page taken down, I’m donating it all to the nearest convicted serial killer, out of spite. You have been warned. Refund and take it down!

Microstory 1576: Time Off

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[Note: Inferkit appears to be down today, so I had to switch to a different text generator from DeepAI.org. I knew I should have worked ahead. That’s what I get for relying on others. As you’ll see, this one is so much worse, and makes so much less sense.]

Prompt

I hate taking time off of work, because it doesn’t lighten my load. All it means is that I have to work ahead before I leave, and catch up when I return.

Botner

The best part is that I don’t have to leave work if I find one in the near future. This is going to cost you money. I’ve had the luxury of getting a few hours of training this summer, especially since I found out how to write JavaScript. I’ll be working on a rewrite of my JavaScript, on time, at the same time I run errands and make plans for the season, and if I’m out at all I need to get off schedule, all at once. That means the most important thing now, is to be able to do everything I want and still come out tomorrow. What’s the best part about working here? You’ll be much better at your job. Your time and work. So much more productive stuff. Why don’t you work at your school? It sounds silly, but if you want to know how to do something or say something—as opposed to waiting for a deadline and learning a new vocabulary—at your school, I can talk you through how to get started. And because I know a lot of people, I can get started. Also, if you are reading this, your mind is going to be more focused if you spend longer, more time, and more time doing...

Conclusion

...whatever you can to get your point across in the most concise and understandable way. You can’t just jumble your ideas together, and spit them out, expecting everyone to make sense of the mess. The last paragraph was an example of what can go wrong when you try to convey a thought without truly thinking about it ahead of time. I left work last week, confident that everything was finished. But it turned out my boss unloaded a bunch of other stuff for me to do while I was gone. He claims he came in at 4:59, but I don’t leave a second sooner than 5:01 every day, so I know he’s lying. Even if he had showed up before I left the room, he knew I had to leave for my sleep study. I couldn’t stick around this time. Besides, none of this garbage is time sensitive. We’re scanning records that no one will see, and we’re winding down the project, so I have plenty of time. I imagine he wants me to finish as quickly as possible so he can let me go. I’m not a temp, there’s supposed to be more work waiting for me in a few weeks, but this company doesn’t like to do things that way. They got a lot of bad publicity for converting most of their workforce to temps, so they didn’t have to provide benefits. So their solution was to hire permanent workers, and just let them go before the benefits cost them too much money. I don’t think they’re doing that math right, but every time they fire someone, and onboard someone new, their proverbial accounting calculator resets, so they can’t tell how much their new method is costing them. They’ll be sorry in the long run.