Cohost writing prompt: @build-a-bot — A machine who hates its job
"I understand," Ten Pale Waving says gravely, "that there are dissatisfactions on the factory floor."
Ten Pale Waving's job consists in large part of diplomatically lying in both directions about exactly what management and mechself indwelt-factory said about the other. In today's case, the head overseer came back from a regional meeting baffled, and annoyed about being baffled, because the company has shareholders from the House of Ferns Verdant, and the House of Ferns Verdant is suddenly full of carefully vague but urgent "concerns" about mechself labour relations.
I wouldn't say dissatisfactions, mechself indwelt-factory chirps back, careful and dubious.
Ten Pale Waving shrugs elaborately.
"No health and safety concerns?" he says. "Perhaps you have procedural suggestions, and you don't feel heard?"
(This is a farce; with a mechself indwelt, the factory is practically self-operating. The mechself would address any safety concern themself, and could in no way be prevented from actioning its own procedural changes.)
No. There's a long pause. Perhaps— it adds, with the usual lack of inflection of an un-sublined chirp; but Ten Pale Waving detects a certain reluctance.
"Yes?"
Certain of the factory processes involve a human touch, as much to be able to mark the products handcrafted as from any necessity.
Perhaps certain casual conversation on the floor could have been misconstrued, the mechself says.
"About?" (Please, he thinks, please don't say the mechself has been fomenting union activity. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened; it's — a difficult circumstance to navigate, put it that way.)
I may have been singing.
Few mechselves routinely employ human-style vocalisation. But the factory floor has a voice address system, for mandatory safety address purposes.
"...Singing."
If I were not indwelt a factory, the mechself says earnestly, and if I were not in the employ of and rightfully directed to productive ends by the company, I think I should like to be a singer.
"...I'm making a note here that you have routine, ignorable grumbles about employment conditions," Ten Pale Waving says wearily. "Off the record, if you were to investigate the standard factory budget provisions for the human worker morale stipend, and institute a karaoke night, nobody could stop you. Please don't make me come back and investigate this again."