By Chaz Osburn
“I work with a bunch of robots.”
“Another bad day at the office dear?” asked Annette, handing Bob his customary after-work martini. “I thought you’d be happier now that they promoted you.”
“Well, the HR department left out one detail during the interview process,” Bob said to his spouse as he watched their three-year-old son, Jacob, move his crayon feverishly across a sheet of paper.
“What’s that, dear?” Annette asked.
“Of the fourteen team members who report to me not one of them—not a one—is what you’d call innovative. When I present them with a challenge, they either just cite the manual or tell me what their former boss would do. What ever happened to critical thinking? Where are the latest ideas? They’re just a bunch of robots, I tell you.”
At that, Jacob looked up from his coloring and asked, “Daddy, can I go to your work?”
“Sure,” Bob replied. “How about tomorrow?”
Jacob had heard his father speak about his job many times and, although Jacob was not exactly sure what an assistant manager of operations did, he was certain that it was important.
The next morning Jacob accompanied his father on the train to the office tower in the city and rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor where his dad worked.
The boy found plenty of things to keep him occupied. First, the receptionist stopped by to ask if Jacob wanted to help her make copies on the copy machine. He quickly discovered the machine had buttons. Jacob loved to press buttons.
Later, the accounting director stopped by and took Jacob to the big meeting room, gave him a fistful of colored markers, and let him draw anything he wanted on the whiteboard. Jacob chose to express his artistic talent by creating a large blue shark that was about to swallow a small red sailboat. The director of business development was so impressed he gave Jacob his business card and asked him to call when he graduated from college in about twenty years.
In the afternoon, the company president himself took the boy to the break room and bought him two large candy bars from the vending machine. This surprised Jacob’s father greatly as the president had a reputation as a cheapskate.
On the train ride home, Jacob began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Jacob’s father asked. “Didn’t you have fun today?”
“Yes, but I didn’t get to see any of the robots you work with!” the boy blurted out.
* * *
The author of two novels, At the Wolf’s Door and Incident at Jonesborough, Chaz Osburn has a background in the newspaper and magazine business and in PR. His short stories have been published in several print and online publications including Amazing Stories, Sci-Fi Shorts, Alternative Liberties, Every Day Fiction and Altered Reality. He lives in Traverse City, MI.