Tossing Cows: The act of thoroughly derailing a train of thought, deliberately or not.
Yubsid was meant to be clerking. It was relatively mindless copy-work. Input this data into those fields. Nothing much in the way of brain power, just check that the right data was in the right place and mark the last entry so she didn’t get confused.
When she took a miniature health break to stretch herself or ensure that her digits got all their requisite exercise, she would muse absently about life in general and nothing in particular.
Except… whenever she really thought about things… Her neighbour Kerin got… talkative.
Just yesterday, she’d been stretching and thinking about the nature of light and space and time, and what it might look like if her cubicle was travelling at the speed of light… and then Kerin popped her head around the wall.
“Hey, do you have a stapler?”
“…huh?” Yubsid shook herself. The visions in her mind forgotten in the face of an otherwise friendly face.
“Stapler. I need one. You got it?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Yubsid got it out and handed it over. And then went back to work.
There were thousands like her in the corporation. Carefully placed next to their very own Kerin type.
The management had figured out how to isolate the kinds of people who derailed any train of thought. Thusly, their productivity skyrocketed.
Such a pity that the innovation rate was plummeting through the floor.
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