“Twunny fiff fwow nee mow piwwows!”
A chubby unicorn smarty in a tailored blue suit stands on a podium by a large megaphone in the massive subterranean laundry room for the Fluffy Hotel. Around him run dozens of overworked and underpaid laundryfluffs trying desperately to launder the sheets and shove them in pneumatic tubes for delivery to the housekeeping carts.
“Haff, haff, su tiwed! Tuu many bwankies tuday! Wan siddown!” An exhausted mare drops the queen sized fitted sheet she’s carrying and splays all her legs out in defeat. A look of contentment begins to form on her face as her muscles relax and her joints decompress.
She is interrupted by a sharp kick to the side.
“Wazybones! Nu sweepy! Haftu du wowk!” Other laundryfluffs were not about to let her catch a break. Not when they had work to do! The hotel had spent no small amount of money on a training program to instill competetive instincts in fluffies so they’d police so called “time theft” in the belief that “lazybones” were making their jobs harder. In reality, all the program really required was for management to start lying to the fluffies about how long they’d have to work or how much they’d have to do. Then, when they were done, tell them there was still more work to do because of lazy fluffies that didn’t do enough.
The effect was twofold. Firstly, fluffies are extremely gullible so no matter how many times you run the scheme they never wise up. You can do it multiple times in a single shift and the worst that’ll happen is one may get so frustrated with how lazy these unseen fluffies have been that they throw a tantrum and get violent. Or are overworked to exhaustion and risk health trouble.
Secondly, since there are ALWAYS just enough lazy fluffies to mandate more work, the working fluffs will violently punish any behavior seen as lazy. Even when the kicking is done, the long term social consequences leave a mark.
Beatrice has a reputation as being lazy. It’s unfair and unearned, of course. As are most assessments of laziness. “Laziness” is just a word bosses came up with to describe someone who’s been pulled thinner than they can handle. It helps the powerful feel even MORE superior to the powerless.
And who’s more powerless than a fluffy?
Beatrice has a bad leg. It’s there, and it works, but her left front shoulder likes to pop in and out of socket from time to time and while a lot of the pain receptors it triggers have been deadened over time, that just means Beatrice has to rely on her profoundly shitty kinesthetic sense to know when she’s about to take a dive onto the floor.
It’s a surprise every time. Beatrice will be wobbling along at a moderately okay rate for a fluffy of her size when BOOM. Her left front hoofsie just slips off to the side and her smeww pwace bounces off the concrete floor. Getting up is often a difficult ordeal. Beatrice struggles to get her shoulder back in place. “Huuuu pwease be nice tu Beeatwiss, weggie! Beeatwiss nu wan be wazybones gain!” She tried impotently to roll right, letting her weggie drop into place. All she did was roll onto her back and allow it to drop further to her side. Now it hurt, too. On top of that, someone had heard her pleas to her meanie weggie.
“Wazybones? Cuwtis NU WIKE!” Oh no! Curtis was coming! He was the biggest and most powerful of the laundryfluffs, and his kickies were the worstest EVER! Beatrice started scrambling faster, to no avail. She was so tired, and her weggie was going numb from the blood flow being cut off. She kept blubbering out half formed offers to convince her weggie to play nice again like it usually does but was interrupted by-
THWACK
“HUUUUUUU! OWWWWIES! NU GIB KICKIES TU BEEA-”
THWACK
“Shaddup! Cuwtis haftu du wowstest kickies an stompies on wazybones!”
THWACK
“NU AM WAZY! HAB HUWTIES IN WEG-”
THWACK
“Cuwtis aweddy teww dummeh shaddup! Dummeh nee heaw gain?”
THWACK
“Sta…stahp…”
THWACK
“Pwease…”
THWACK
THWACK
THWACK
THWACK
…
…
…
“Tee hee! Wub gibbin huwties!”
The laundry room had high turnaround, if you believe it.
