The following day at precisely 11:00 a.m., the office was quiet, save for the hum of computers and the faint tapping of keyboards. Most employees were either zoning out in meetings or mindlessly refreshing their inboxes, hunting for the next email to ignore.
Jim leaned back in his chair, a conspiratorial grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He glanced over at X017, who stood beside him, perfectly still and calm as always.
“Are we ready?” Jim whispered.
“Operational readiness is at 100%,” X017 replied. “Initiating print sequence now.”
The dot-matrix printer roared to life behind a concealed panel. The first sound was a high-pitched whine as the paper began to feed through. Then came the screeching grind of ancient mechanics at work, a noise so loud and jarring it made several heads pop up from behind their monitors.
Karen was the first to notice the strip of paper emerging from the slot in the wall. “What the…?” She stood, walking over to the slot as the printer’s relentless ch-ch-chunk echoed across the room.
The paper unfurled slowly, line by line, until Karen tore it free with a satisfying rip. She squinted at the barely legible ink and read aloud:
“ATTENTION ALL STAFF:
To reduce email clutter and improve workplace focus, all corporate directives will now be printed via this streamlined communication system. Please note that reading these directives is mandatory and integral to maintaining productivity standards.
Thank you for your cooperation as we strive to achieve excellence.”
Muti-Matrix Human Resource Management
“This is brilliant! Finally, we’re doing something about all those spam emails clogging my inbox.”, Karen clapped once excitedly.
“Oh yeah,” Douglas said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because printing stuff out on dinosaur tech is the solution to our problems. What’s next? Smoke signals?”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Do you think it’s from HR? It sounds… official.”, Anonymous co-worker number 42 nervously queried.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Jim shrugged, his tone nonchalant. “Super-efficient, too. I mean, look at that crisp formatting.” He paused, then added with a grin, “Classic corporate strategy: solve a non-issue with a real issue.”
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Tell you what—we should start an office pool. Let’s see how long it takes them to figure out this is a terrible idea. My money’s on two weeks, tops.”
Baffled, everyone returned to their desks. Low murmurs of conversations can be heard.
Around the office, people returned to their desks, a group gathered around the freshly printed directive in confusion. The low hum of murmured conversations filled the cubicle farm as coworkers speculated about the memo’s source.
“Do you think HR is, like… outsourcing now?” Karen whispered to Worker 42, who was already squinting at the slot in the wall.
“Outsourcing? No. This feels… bigger. Like they’re watching us,” Worker 42 muttered, nodding suspiciously toward the paper portal. “Just wait, drone bots are next!” She grabbed her scarf and hid under it as if there were spies in the ceiling and crouched walked back to her desk.
Douglas stayed behind, standing a few feet from the gleaming brass-framed slot, arms crossed. His eyes narrowed as he studied the neatly folded paper still protruding from the opening.
He stepped closer, leaning in as if proximity might reveal the portal’s secrets. “This thing is wrong,” he muttered under his breath, glaring at the silent slot like it had personally insulted him.
Jim watched from his chair, hiding a grin behind his coffee mug. “Careful, Douglas. If you stare too hard, it may stare back at you!”
Douglas turned to glare at Jim. “I don’t trust anything that doesn’t have a clear source. This… this is the start of something stupid.”
Douglas stomped off, muttering about corporate bureaucracy. Jim raised his coffee cup in a mock toast at Douglas’s retreating form. “To stupidity, then. Long may it reign.”
Sooner than Jim expected, the office settled back into its usual rhythm, with employees murmuring over cubicle walls about the strange new method of communication but ultimately accepting it as just another quirk of corporate life.
X017 strode into Jim’s cubicle, his metallic frame perfectly upright. “The first communication was a success?”
Jim smirked, swiveling his chair to face X. “If by success, you mean no one really questioned it. Well, Douglas is instantly suspicious.”
X tilted his head. “Suspicion is within expected parameters. I predict his skepticism will fuel further disruptions.”
Jim chuckled. “Good. I wouldn’t want him to disappoint me.”