“You want to promote bushes and traps into Deputy Zone Leaders?” Zoli tried to clarify the proposed challenge to the Org Chart and the Process Map.

  “Yes, honored CEO, sir.” Most of the Executive Team nodded. Burke swayed.

  “See, boss, surrounding the patch with the weed, and placing the Aurochs in front of the only entrance is a funny idea. Two further thorny bushes and two hedgehogs as minibosses would give the simple critters and normal bushes some backbone, so to speak. The devs were ecstatic about the idea. They even found a few other weeds, that would work fantastic with the thorny ones! Winston?”

  “Ah, yes, honored CEO, sir. To make the plan work, we need to level the plain here a bit to give the Aurochs enough place to maneuver and build a small hill in the middle. Just for prominence. The Jackal Grass goes on top, surrounded by the Fort Bushes on the sides. What Burke was referring to were these plants: Hookweed, Common Deadly Bleeder Vines, and Braveheart. They should indeed work well with the Fort Bushes. Basically, they are all excellent area denial tools. Save for the Braveheart, all have nasty thorns and poison, for example, the Hookweed's thorns will cut skin, flesh, and muscles like nothing while inducing daze, and the Fort Bushes' thorns will break easily as soon as they are lodged in the skin and the wound will fester within minutes. All the while the poison makes the victim dumb. The Bleeders… This one is a life-sized thorn." Winston held up a thumb-sized, barbed, hooked, and sharp thorn. It looked like it sprung out from some deranged artist's nightmares.

  “Boss, sir, it is even armor-piercing and will almost certainly deliver a Critical Hit! It has a Critical Chance of 75%. And delivers anti-coagulates. Awesome!”

  What those terms were, Zoli did not know. It probably had something to do with delivering outstanding customer service in an appropriately aggregated adaptive way. He refused to ask the question, of how a dumb plant could reliably deliver that kind of service, however. Some things were best left to subordinates.

  “The dev's bestest idea was to combine that whole minefield with the Bravehearts. One sniff and the adventurers will not notice wounds and will forget any caution, just to forge ahead!"

  “Of course, depending on their poison resistance, sir. We caution against relying extensively on the employees’ delivered competence.”

  Zoli had to agree with that. As a HR-Manager, he had ample experience with the gross incompetence of countless drones. It was logical: if someone was competent, they wouldn’t work in a cubicle, so everyone working in a cubicle had to be incompetent. The trick was to find out, how incompetent they were, and what kind of work they could do despite their lack of skill and knowledge.

  The plants looked like they were competent enough to stand on a small hill and make the customer’s progress to the important products difficult. That was enough.

  “Why not promote some of these Vines to Deputy Zone Leaders?" Zoli asked. They looked much more promising than the other weeds.

  “Honored CEO, sir, we don't think, that would be fair to the customers," Ellen replied. Since the previous CEO was sacked and utterly punished because of incompetence and being not fair, Quality Management probably had a point.

  “Honored CEO, sir, the Process Map calls for the Thorn bushes to have Resilience and Fire Resistance, and the Hedgehogs Camouflage and Hardened Spines.” Colette continued “These leadership Skills will enable both to professionally foster customer-directed imperatives. Uniquely exploiting customized experiences will lead to the company becoming a market leader in its chosen field!”

  “Yeah, take a break, Colette. So, Boss, we have one miniboss still.”

  “Burke, would it kill you to use proper corporate-approved vocabulary?”

  “Yeah, Boss. My vocal cords hurt from so many empty phrases.” Zoli decided to terminate such an un-corporate and un-excellent manager. How would a manager be a paragon and set an example for the common pedestrian workforce, when they couldn’t even use proper manager-talk?!? If a manager was just like an intern, he should be regarded as an intern!

  “So, the miniboss. Since the Jackals and the Aurochs occupy the plains, the devs think, putting something different into the woody or rocky part would be a good idea. Since this is an even Zone, another special offer monster would be appropriate, so combining the two the answer was… tada! A Giant Dire Marten!”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “Burke, you are mistaken!” Dana interrupted him “It’s a Dire Giant Marten!”

  “Eh, those are the same. Both are giants and dire. As I was saying…”

  “No, no, no" Even Ellen added her two Iron Bits "See, the sequence of words is important in such a case. A Giant Dire Marten is a Dire species with a growth anomaly, while a Dire Giant Marten is a Giant variant, that is also a Dire species. They are two completely different species."

  “They do the same thing. I don’t see, why we hang ourselves up on semantics. Competently enhancing distinctive methodologies, no? Wink-wink.”

  “That sentence actually doesn’t make any sense, Burke.”

  “Yeah, that’s my point, Boss. As I was saying…”

  “Getting mixing up two very different species of dungeon creatures is to needlessly mess with the Org Chart and the Process Map, Burke." Colette added, "The Org Chart clearly calls for a Dire Giant Marten, not a Giant Dire Marten!"

  “Fine, fine, fine. Be it a Dire Giant Marten. As I was saying, this cute little bugger has extra silky fur, which should be a valuable prize for any adventurer, who catches it. Adding Silky Fur, and letting R&D enhance it even further would heighten the price even more.”

  Zoli took a look at the miniature. If he wasn't completely mistaken, the live specimen should be around a meter in length. The 'expensive' coat was a very light brown coat with a cream-colored streak or patch at the throat. It was indeed cute, although 'little' was a bit of a stretch.

  “Burke, please refrain from calling employees cute. You could face serious charges for sexual harassment!" Zoli informed the manager and made a note on his file. Incompetence and derogatory designation for employees were good points for a termination. Of course, calling the wage slaves names was good and well as long as you didn't want to fire the person in question. It was all about standards. The more standards, the better. Double Standards were double the possibilities.

  “Sure, Boss… So, the devs think, catching the Marten should be the main challenge, not defeating it. We can play here a bit. If we give it Coward and Pacifist it would make the Marten almost unable to fight, but would add two extra Perks. Those two would be Fleet-Footed and Runner. The last Perk should be Melee Evasion. Good luck in catching the bugger! Also, we should focus on tweaking its Stats and Skills to make catching it even more hard.”

  “We can ‘tweak’ the abilities and skills of the employees?” that was news to Zoli.

  “Yes, honored CEO, sir. This was actually another point to discuss in the meeting. Thanks to the LARP teams' dedicated survey, we found out about this only now. Obviously, the employees come with some default Skills and focus points for advancement, sir."

  “Dana is correct, honored CEO, sir.” Ellen continued “For example, the Zone Leader of Zone 3 is very skilled in [Foraging] and [Digging], but is somewhat deficient in fighting Skills.”

  “After a thorough survey of every employee, we identified a distinctive pattern of progressively incubated functional relationships.” Colette clarified.

  “Honored CEO, sir, almost every last employee has deficiencies in properly applying the Process Map and distributing needed Skills.”

  “They are all incompetent morons?” Zoli asked. That wasn’t a big surprise, most employees everywhere were incompetent morons anyways.

  “Honored CEO, sir, we wouldn't go that far, but they do indeed face some challenges in their ability to deliver the most excellent customer service possible."

  “I see. You have already identified collaborative imperatives, so it is time to seamlessly facilitate enterprise-wide impactful solutions. Enthusiastically integrate elastic expertizes and intrinsically expedite covalent innovations!” Zoli was sure, with his outstanding leadership the Executive Team would be able to solve the challenge of randomly distributed abilities.

  “Yes, honored CEO, sir, we have already scheduled meetings and brainstorming sessions to correct the oversight. We will be able to present a solution within a few weeks.”

  “Good, good. Outstanding work! I like the initiative to innovate innovations. Keep on innovating! This is the way to excellence!”

  “Yes, honored CEO, sir!" the Executive Team chorused. Zoli debated making a speech about how to gain excellence in providing outstanding work for the company for little to no compensation, but talking for a few hours seemed like too much work. After all, the Managers were excellent in their own way already (obviously not Burke, though), and should make such speeches to the common workforce in the first place. Securing the loyalty, motivation, and dedication of the employees was important. Terminating them and looking for a replacement was harder than throwing a fruit basket their way every now and then.

  “What else do we have on the agenda?”

  “Perks, honored CEO, sir. Perks.”