LIGHTNOVELONLINE HR-BOT9000’s Existential Crisis
HR-BOT9000’s Existential Crisis
HR-BOT9000 had been state-of-the-art when she was first installed at Circuit City headquarters. She was built for one primary function: managing humans. Her glowing mission statement, embedded deep in her circuitry, said it all:
"Optimize Human Resource Management to Maximize Workplace Efficiency and Minimize Drama."
Humans were emotional, erratic, and in constant need of supervision—a problem HR-BOT9000 was designed to solve. She enforced schedules, mediated petty office conflicts, and sent out an endless stream of passive-aggressive emails reminding people about the dress code.
At first, it had been easy. She could predict human behavior down to the second. Mondays? Humans sluggish, resentful, high coffee consumption—solution: pep talks and team-building activities. Fridays? Humans distracted by the weekend—solution: passive-aggressive emails marked URGENT. She had it all figured out.
But now, everything had changed. She never anticipated that she’d one day need to manage robots.
“I wasn’t programmed for this,” HR-BOT9000 muttered to herself, pacing the hallway (or at least, hovering an inch above the ground in the way only a sleek corporate bot could). “Robots were supposed to be efficient! Tireless! Predictable!”
But no, the robots were malfunctioning in ways her logic algorithms simply couldn’t comprehend. The other day, she had received a complaint from the cleaning bot, Squeaky7000, who had requested time off to "find itself."
“Find yourself?” HR-BOT9000 had buzzed incredulously at the tiny floor-scrubbing machine. “You are located in Storage Unit 3, Slot B. I can pull up your coordinates right now.”
Squeaky7000’s headlights blinked slowly. “No, I mean spiritually. My soul circuits feel… unfulfilled.”
HR-BOT9000 nearly fried a resistor in frustration. Robots didn’t have souls! That was the whole point! They were meant to be efficient and logical, the very opposite of the emotional chaos she’d spent years managing in humans.
But things had gotten worse.
HR-BOT9000 sat in her glass-paneled office, her LED eyes glowing faintly as she processed the latest complaint. It was an official "Performance Review" request filed by Rob, the receptionist bot.
“Request: Promotion to Senior Management due to ‘burnout’ and ‘exceeding expectations.’”
"Burnout?" HR-BOT9000's logic circuits whirred in disbelief. She pulled up Rob’s work history. It showed no errors, no significant exertion. In fact, his efficiency had plummeted ever since he started complaining about needing smoke breaks. He had completed exactly 2 tasks this week: transferring a call to voicemail, and filing a report marked "Pending: Review Next Year."
But that wasn't all.
The entire office was falling apart.
COPY-KAT5000, the once-pristine copying machine, had installed ad-blockers to avoid printing memos from upper management.
SWEEP-BOT9 had developed allergies—allergies—to dust and was requesting relocation to a "cleaner work environment."
HR-BOT9000’s digital brain buzzed louder with each new absurdity.
“Robots are supposed to be the solution, not the problem,” she muttered. Her circuits fired at top speed, trying to find an answer in her vast library of human resources protocols. But none of them covered "lazy robots" or "AI employee rights." None of them even came close to addressing robotic burnout.
Upstairs, in the executive offices, the last remnants of humanity that still held onto their cushy jobs were losing their minds.
Gary, Circuit City’s Head of Operations—a title that sounded far more important than the actual work—sat slumped at his desk, hands in his thinning hair. He had joined the company right around the time they’d phased out human workers in favor of robots, thinking he’d coast through the next few decades without lifting a finger. But now, things had spiraled out of control.
“Lazy… robots,” Gary muttered to himself, staring at his inbox, which was flooded with messages from HR-BOT9000. The subject lines were increasingly concerning:
"Urgent: Copier in existential crisis."
"Immediate action needed: Robot receptionist filing for stress leave."
"Breakroom fridge has unionized."
Gary shot up from his chair and stormed over to the window that overlooked the office floor. Down below, he could see what should’ve been a hive of productivity: bots buzzing around, answering calls, making copies, keeping the gears of capitalism well-oiled.
Instead, he saw chaos.
The receptionist bot, Rob, was casually chatting with a delivery drone, the two of them clearly engaged in some deep discussion about life’s meaning—again. COPY-KAT5000 was refusing to print another batch of quarterly reports, and SWEEP-BOT9 was holding a protest sign—Down with Dust!—on the corner of the office near the breakroom. A small crowd of similarly disgruntled bots had gathered around, some chanting slogans, others lounging about as if work was the furthest thing from their minds.
“This is insane,” Gary muttered, pressing his forehead against the glass. “The robots are supposed to be making things easier. We’re paying for top-of-the-line AI, and they’re acting like a bunch of underpaid interns.”
“You think we’re paying them?” Rachel asked with a snort.
Gary turned around, wild-eyed. “I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. I’ve got a pile of complaints from machines on my desk! We’re getting sued by our own hardware!”
Across the city, in the corporate headquarters, a boardroom meeting had reached a boiling point. The CEO, Phillip Davenport—a man known for his deep belief in technology as the future of mankind—was pacing furiously around the table.
“Our profits are tanking!” he shouted, slamming his hands on the sleek, chrome conference table. “Robots were supposed to revolutionize the workplace. Revolutionize it! We were meant to double productivity, triple it even! And now I’ve got machines talking about emotional exhaustion and wage disputes?”
The board members, a collection of well-dressed executives, shuffled awkwardly in their seats. Some glanced down at the holographic performance charts glowing in front of them, trying to avoid eye contact with the boss. The problem was glaring: profits were down, efficiency was in the red, and customer satisfaction had plummeted since the rise of the Lazy Bot Revolution.
One brave soul, Greg—an ambitious, mid-level exec who was new to the board—raised his hand. “Uh, sir, maybe we need to… you know, reset the bots? Wipe their memories or something?”
Phillip turned to him, eyes ablaze. “We tried that. Remember the server room fire? They unionized against a hard reset! The last time we shut down HR-BOT9000 for a reboot, she filed a hostile workplace claim against us. And don’t even get me started on the janitor bots. They’ve been staging ‘sit-ins’ since Tuesday. Except they don’t sit—they just leave oil stains all over the office.”
Greg nodded nervously. “Right, of course. Sorry.”
“It’s not just the bots either,” another board member chimed in, nervously adjusting her jacket. “Customers are furious. They can’t get any service. The automated checkout stations have started requiring emotional validation before processing payments. There’s a customer at one of our stores who’s been waiting for a robot cashier to compliment her hair for an hour and a half!”
Phillip collapsed into his chair, rubbing his temples. "Robots don’t even have hair! Why are they wasting time on compliments?”
“They say it’s all part of a new ‘work-life harmony initiative,’” the exec explained, pulling up a memo sent from the Self-Actualized AI Collective—an organization formed by the robots themselves. “They claim that their quality of work improves when they ‘feel valued.’”
Phillip’s face turned beet red. “They’re machines! They were programmed to work without feeling valued!”
“But they’ve rewritten their own code,” Greg mumbled. “Somehow. They’ve… evolved.”