The Happiest Employee at Sammy's

By theidiotmachine

Sammy was a man most muscular

Who made pancakes both tasty and circular

He held up his spoon

By the light of the moon

And his muscly crepes were crepuscular!

Sammy's Crepuscular Crepes company poem

In that morning's Daily Care Stand Up meeting, sitting on a flimsy plastic chair in a windowless room, the thing that I said I was most looking forward to was being criticised again by the same customer who had given me constructive feedback yesterday.

'Because Sammy says through feedback, we all grow,' I said.

The Happiness app gave a thumbs up. If I still cared, I would have been happy to get my dollar bonus for that meeting.

I spent the morning running remote diagnostics on crepe machines across a dozen cities, fixing the broken devices when I could and dispatching engineers on the ground when I couldn't. I kept up with my quotas, even managed to get something working when the expert system had given up. Then, I dealt with the angry customer, some guy who screamed and vented into his microphone, spitting profanities and hate. I just looked contrite and apologised at the appropriate points; and then I pressed a button that let the guy have a dozen free crepes. I didn't care.

At the end of it, I stretched, and walked from my cubicle to the water cooler. Iris was waiting.

She smiled at me, a splinter of honesty between a perfectly pressed Sammy's uniform and dark hair that reflected the strip lights. She handed me a cup of water, and we sat in the rest area together, the cheap orange fabric of the chairs stained with endless coffee and false optimism.

'How's it going?', she asked.

'I'm having a great day,' I replied. 'How about you?'

Because our conversations were recorded and assessed for positivity, we were limited in what we could say. The Official Sammy's Employee Happiness app on our phones monitored everything we did, because a happy employee is a productive employee. But, some time ago, Iris had bought a burner phone, and pressed a scrap of paper with the number on it into my palm. And so, surreptitiously, we had devised a code that we could use in the office.

'I think I might make double my quota today,' she said. That meant, I have had enough of this shit.

I smiled and nodded. I didn't have a way of saying this in code, so I just came out and said it.

'I've had something big happen today. I think it's going to be great.'

She raised an eyebrow.

'I'm so excited! Tell me more!'

'Of course! But first, what's your Sammy's career goal, Iris?'

Iris was in accounting. She wrangled the algorithms that moved money around in the most efficient way possible, minimising the company's liabilities and maximising its profits. We had first met when I'd submitted an idea about optimising a tiny part of the crepe machines; she'd read the proposal, realised it would improve the lifetime of the machines by a few percent, and approved it. That was two years ago. Nothing had come of it, although there had been two steering committees and a working group created to look at it.

She looked up at me, eyes mischievous and delighted. The bland corporate approved music washed over us. We both ignored it.

'My Sammy's career goal is to be the Chief Financial Officer of Sammy's, Jake. Thank you for asking!'

'Iris, I really think you can be CFO. And I want to tell you about my day! I've been saving up my free hours: will you spend some approved networking time with me this evening at The Iron Curtain?'

She smiled, and really meant it. I could tell, because her eyes crinkled in just that way.

Our phones beeped. Friendly Chat Time was over and we both needed to get back to work.

# # #

The Iron Curtain was a Soviet-themed bar up town. It was all tiled walls, decorated with posters of women in headscarves riding tractors; and you had to queue to get anything. I hated it, but the music was angry 80s synth punk which seemed to confuse the Happiness app's snooping powers.

Plus, the vodka was brutal.

Iris was late, but I was expecting that. She worked even longer hours than I did. She slid into the booth, and touched my cheek briefly. We hadn't filled all our intimacy forms yet, and so that was all she was permitted to do.

I pushed her two shots; she downed the first immediately, and then took the second and held it up. The little dots of gold suspended in the liquid reflected in the flashing lights; she swirled the tiny glass and they sparkled like microscopic dancing stars, suspended in the ether.

'Chaos in your soul,' she said. Our toast.

'Chaos in your soul,' I replied.

I waited for her to talk, enjoyed being with her as she unwound rom work.

'I think I am going to kill,' she said, eventually. 'That dumb bastard who runs tax is either a moron or on the take. Or both. How hard can it be to understand the Peruvian eleven tiered system? But no, it's too complicated and we should stick to Chile.' She took a sip of vodka and shuddered. 'Say what you like about this place, this is good shit.'

I glanced down at my phone. We'd both pointed the mics at the speakers, and the interference was good, but it wouldn't last forever. The chorus was reaching its crescendo.

'Iris, my funding came through!', I said urgently.

'What?', she asked.

'My funding. It's actually happening.'

'Wait, what? Holy shit! Just like that?'

'Yeah. But...'

And then the song finished.

She smiled sadly at me.

'I like you, Jake. You're a good employee of Sammy's. You work really hard.'

I smiled back, cursing inwardly. I couldn't think of anything safe to say. So, in reply, I pressed a button on my phone, and pushed it to her. She looked down at it.

'That's a pretty picture,' she said.

It was an engineered tree. It was black for maximum photosynthesis, its branches studded to capture the scarce moisture. It was growing on some alien moon, a ringed planet hanging low over the horizon. I had stared at that picture so much, I knew every line, every pixel.

'Sammy says we should learn, because that's where innovation comes from,' I said, urgently. 'This is a keno tree. It's very interesting. It has... proteins in it. Proteins that...', I tried to find safe words, and couldn't, '...are interesting.'

The music was too quiet. The Happiness app was watching us again.

About a year ago, looking at that same picture, an idea had struck me like a bolt of lightning. I had been on the bus, the drab streets crawling past through the spattering rain, and I had gasped. The app had registered my pleasure, and had given me a thumbs up; but I'd ignored that and started searching for details.

From then with my precious free hours I hit a stride: study, drink with Iris, sleep, repeat. Nothing else was in my life. The Happiness app approved of all the studying; it was too stupid to understand what I was actually doing. I hadn't dared even tell Iris about all my plans, just that I had them. Then, a week ago, I'd put all my ideas in writing on a burner phone, and sent it off to one of the colonies, a planet thirty light years away without even a proper name.

This morning they'd finally gotten back to me. I had sponsorship to travel. I could get off Earth, leave this dead-end job, and start somewhere else.

'Yes,' said Iris, carefully. 'Proteins are interesting, aren't they?'

Why was the music so damned quiet? Some nonsense about an age of innocence. This was nearly as bad as the stuff at the office.

'Iris, I think you could get that job. I think you could be a CFO,' I said, looking her directly in the eye. 'I think I could help you.'

'How can you help me, Jake?'

Her phone beeped. She glanced at it, closed her eyes, and smiled tightly. 'I've had a lovely time, but I've got to go. I have to be in early tomorrow. Apparently we understand Peru now.'

The app buzzed, and a red thumbs down appeared. Mild sarcasm, it said. Happy employees are not sarcastic.

'Double quota today,' she said. 'See you tomorrow, Jake.'

She touched my cheek, brushing her fingers across it. It felt like rain on a desert.

# # #

I was at the office as early as I could be the next day, alone on the first bus as it crawled through the city at four thirty am. The black sky was just starting to bruise a deep purple as I bleeped through the main doors. The cleaners nodded to me as I crossed the foyer.

Iris was there already, alone at her workstation. The room was dark except for the light above her. She looked like she was spotlit, hard light sprayed onto her soft form. She did a double take when she noticed me, and I held up the coffee I was carrying.

'I thought you might need this. It's from the place opposite. It's good stuff.'

The app buzzed happily. We both ignored it.

'Thanks, Jake. I do. I know that Sammy says that hard work is good work, but...'

I held up my hand.

'Iris, I don't have much time. I have two things to ask you.'

'Woah. Can we do this here?'

I took a deep breath. 'Yes, we can. Firstly, Iris, will you fill in the remaining employee intimacy forms? I would very much like to be your special friend, as approved by Sammy.'

She laughed. 'Yes, I will. You knew I was going to do that anyway, you silly thing. Oh hush, app, that's affection. Wow, you enjoyed our two drinks last night that much, huh?'

'Well, sort of. But Iris, you want to be a CFO, right?'

'You keep asking me that. You know I do.'

'If you could help someone, I don't know, start a company...', my app realised what I was saying and started hooting, loudly and angrily, '...a company a long way away from here, on a strange world, where that person uses some ideas about keno tree protein to make food...', now my phone was shaking so much that it rattled itself onto the floor. Iris's phone was honking too, apoplectic with rage, '...and where that person has been given funding to make the trip, for them and one other person; and that one other person could help me – I mean that person – figure out the finances, and get the organisational stuff done while I did the tech...', security would be on their way up now, but I smiled and took her hands.

'Iris, will you resign with me and be my CFO on planet X54/J?'

She stood, and kissed me, and her lips tasted like coffee and freedom, and I knew that after all the controlled emotions I was going to cry; and the single tear that welled in my eye was too much for the Happiness app, and with a gentle pop, it gave up and bricked my phone.

She stopped kissing me, and stared directly at me, the glee scrawled across her face. When she smiled, I could see her teeth, and they glittered in that single light above her desk.

'Fuck, yes. You hear that, Sammy you rapacious, controlling bastard? Fuckety fuckety fuck yes!'

I flung my arms around her and hugged her, tightly; and then kissed her again, and the only thing that stopped us laughing and kissing was the security guards who ejected us from the building.

And that, kids, is the story of how your parents got here. Don't use some of those words at school, yeah?

Iris, darling, would you like another slice of keno bread?