All Mr. Rich wanted was a court-arranged signed promise stating that Rainbow wouldn't practice stunts over Barnyard Bargains any more. But judges are fickle creatures, and so the ruling put her in the aisles. Working off the damages while supposedly learning some respect for the store itself.
She wants to be a good employee. She's dedicating herself to this.
It's odd how all of Rainbow's interests seem to end in that one crater the same way.
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Chapters (1)
"As penalty," the judge ruled, "I render that you shall work in Barnyard Bargains for a period of no less than three weeks, at six hours per day.
Or as the Equestrian Justice System refers to it, the Mutual Death Sentence.
Oh boy more Filthy (haha). Gonna read this asap.
"The road to disaster is paved with good intentions."
Simply amazing :)
The way you write Rainbow Dash at times reminds me of a Zeppelin. A sleek, streamlined, smallish capsule, held up by a truly vast amount of hot air.
Maybe Filthy should've opened a Barnyard Bargains outlet outside the store
Is this a jab at a poor judge you have heard about?
As for how to punish Dash the best way to deal with her training addiction. She also just can't deal with always keeping her hooves on the ground.
I'm willing to bet that Rainbow has had at least a few more crashes reported than committed.
When asked (or ordered) to do something, of course Loyalty is going to give it her all. No half measures for Rainbow.
I spotted that grass gears were mentioned. I am choosing to believe that is a unique aspect of Earth pony magic, and not a typo. Also I think in the final scene you have two defendants when you need one of them to be plaintiffs.
Congratulations, and thanks for the best Boxing Day gift ever!
No, he never has. He never thanked God for it & now it's Too Late.
Ow man that should be good
Funny, that concept has a lot to do with marks.
I love when the punchline is both inevitable and unexpected.
Those who judge can't think, right? I think that's the moral of this one. Or at least, I can judge so.
Haha, I loved that his name was Overreach. Perfect theme naming strikes again! Really enjoyable new entry in the BBFU (Barnyard Bargains Fictional Universe).
a story comes to mind for some reason: a judge sentenced someone to house arrest. his crime was selling drugs...from his home!
Estee, you gives us presents! Thank you so mucH!
Yeah, that went about as well as could be expected. Glad Rainbow and Filthy maintained that mutual understanding and gave the judge his comeuppance.
...Does anyone else think that, by this point, Estee deserves a page for her ongoing Barnyard Bargains Battles fics, which obviously seem to be inhabiting their own shared universe, even if they're not part of the Continuum?
I guess this is supposed to be "stopped"?
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Aren't they? I was under the impression that they were in the Continuum, just that they usually didn't revolve around the Mane 6.
Continuum Rainbow seems pretty close to being an idiot savant. If anything, it's testament to just how extreme her talent is, because her discipline issues would mean that she'd have no shot at the team were her flying talent merely that of an "average" Wonderbolt.
Man I love Barnyard Bargains stories. XD Great Christmas present, Estee! merry Christmas!
I feel like the situation could have gone better if they HADN’T kept switching her position. Because then they gave her a new scenario, with new variables to screw things up. But if you actually make the person repeat the task, and actually SUPERVISE them instead of leaving them alone to just figure it out with no experience, they have a chance to learn from their mistakes.
Maybe she was never going to be good at customer service. But repeatedly clarifying to her just HOW she should be retrieving carts, or that she does not have the authority to change where items are stored, should conceivably be possible.
But most of all, I wish someone had sat Rainbow down and explained that EVERYONE FEELS THIS WAY ABOUT RETAIL. Sure, there are people more suited to it who take after it naturally, but working drudging hours doing something boring that you don’t like for pay is painful for MOST people, especially when you haven’t learned to break your own laziness and just suck it up and get it done. That would have been a fantastic lesson, because as it stands, Rainbow is literally every teenager at their first minimum wage job. I would have loved if that had been explained to her in some capacity, although of course then this would be a different plotline. Ah well. Still quite the entertaining adventure.
So... I think this counts as a happy ending?
"And a tight knot of soaked, shivering employees was gathered in a tight knot near the registers."
I'm guessing the phrasing there got accidentally doubled?
"document over the stallion as"
"document over to the stallion as"?
Another excellent Estee story. :)
And that judge was Elderly...
He's been working for a long time... How will this affect the whole Equestrian justice system?
Does Mr. Rich get some recompense for the terrible judicial process?
Questions. So many questions, but this was a great story to create them with!
...
No one other than Rainbow's ever been hurt by her crashes! Great for her!
...
Gears... Sounds like something Rachette could improve...
...
P.R's personal life... Interesting!
I should not have been drinking coffee as I read that.
I can hear the pieces of the doomsday machine sliding into place. Especially once Dash rattles off the full litany of the employee's hoofbook.
Also, the fact that that many insults for pegasi who refuse to land even exist says a lot about culture below Cloudsdale.
Did... did Fluttershy ask Dash for headlight fluid and a box of button holes? I'm astonished and strangely proud.
I've played D&D with this kind of person. It is indeed terrifying either way. And I can't help but note the use of boldface over italics. That always bodes... interestingly.
Oh dear. Bit of brony history to fellow readers: Before she was Berry Punch, we knew her as OPPP. Overprotective Parent Pony.
You poor, sweet summer child.
Yeah, that went about as well as could be expected. And really, some names just shouldn't be allowed near certain occupations, mark or no. Not in a world where Nominative determinism is as strong as it is here. And some minor, minor credit to Dash for her attempts to make retail an enjoyable experience for all ages. Ten points for good intentions, minus several million for good thinking.
Thank you for this, and a belated Merry Christmas.
She reminds me of something I read once about how loyalty is all well and good but it has to be married to knowing who and what you're loyal to. Other ponies barely register as real to someone as unfocused as she is and does it ever show here!
Only Estee can make retail entertaining.
A couple of thoughts pop to mind here, despite the entertaining nature of the story:
(1) We know from "Testing Testing 123" that Rainbow Dash is aware of her surroundings in the air, so mentions that she accidentally collides or almost-collides with other flyers seems a bit of Flanderizing to me.
(2) Wow. So many near-disasters in so little time. I know Filthy Rich has a lot of other stores across Equestria to amortize the losses... but, well... how does the Ponyville store stay in business? Or is this how any store other than Barnyard Bargains in Ponyville keeps its doors open? A BB retail disaster every six months or so might be enough to keep ill-advised specialty storekeepers like Davenport from going bust...
I hope that Judge is the IDIOT who is going to PAY for everything.
It's kind of a wonder how Rainbow can keep any job.
10005772 In the show she has three: (1) Ponyville weather manager, which as we've seen she does fairly well, organizing ponies for large undertakings and being good enough herself that a day's work is done in minutes, leaving more time for napping. (2) Wonderbolt (season 6 and on), which is apparently a part-time thing since she never lacks time for other stuff. (3) Teacher, at which (based on how we see her) she is woefully incompetent.
Heroing isn't so much a job as a calling. The difference is, callings don't bring you a paycheck.
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He makes up the difference in selling tickets to the show that is Ponyville. And sometimes the Bearers.
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I think that Rainbow will tell you that, despite what the other pegasus thinks, she did not almost collide. Why, she had a whole centimetre of clearance!
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He still gets plenty of business, and there's the disaster relief fund. Plus the Ponyville branch is where he's on hand to manage things personally. It's also the one where new ideas get a test run before being implemented in other stores so the budget has allowances for ones that don't work out.
As a supervisor myself, this really hit home for me. And made me laugh my ass off. Wonderful work!
I do have one question. What did that judge do to get himself pulled into court exactly? I'm not good with law. Still, this was an amazing story, and a good read.
10007339 Judicial misconduct. Basically, his ruling punished the plaintiff as well as the defendant. Furthermore, if this is a civil proceeding, it's a judge's duty to accept a settlement between parties provided that it's neither manifestly unfair nor ignores the facts of the case.
But our Judge Overreach was apparently well-named- and apparently this case was far from the only one in which he handed down, shall we say, inventive sentencing.
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Wow. I honestly NEVER knew of that. Very good to know. Thank you for the reply.
As someone who feels like Rainbow did here a lot, especially lately, this makes me feel a little better.
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"Did... did Fluttershy ask Dash for headlight fluid and a box of button holes? I'm astonished and strangely proud."
Maybe Discord is rubbing off on her.
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Repeatedly.
I know that feeling. I work at a thrift store, and stuff gets dropped and shattered a lot. Usually it's because one of our donors left something fragile in a bag of clothes and we didn't realize that fact. it's really irritating. (top tip, if you're donating items to a thrift store/charity/what-have-you, please separate clothing from fragile items, it'll make the worker's jobs easier, thanks)
You know, that possibility seems to explain some of the donations we've gotten...
Overall, I enjoyed this look at the crazy (and funny) side of retail work.
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He must be. Between that and the "bear-er" thing, she's really found a way to be playfully assertive
I always found stories of judges doing things like this to be a bit of overreach. But this was amusing.
This makes sense, considering that it's Ponyville, and Rainbow Dash isn't the only thing that is constantly going around and damaging it all the time.
Yes...that sounds like just the right amount of paradoxical contradictory-ness for working retail--just enough for it to sound logical and escape immediate notice...until you think about it harder and realize some of those kind of conflict with each other.
Having worked retail before myself, I think I'm going to end up sympathizing a lot with Rainbow while reading this fic.
Sounds like there's a whole other story there that I almost want to read now too.
See, I told you I'd be relating to this fic left and right all throughout.
Oh dear. I think I already see the inevitable problem with that, given the trends we've already seen thus far with Rainbow's approach to all of this.
I mean, c'mon...there are nightmare toys already out there on those shelves. I can put two with two here.
So I said I was going to sympathizing with Rainbow and the various woes that comes with working retail...but in the end I think I ended up sympathizing with Filthy most in the end, which I guess I should've seen coming, given the premise.
But hey, it all worked out okay--that dumb judge got all the blame in the end.
Rainbow Dash was so well-meaning with the screw-ups and it was freaking hilarious.
So in the end, i guess you could say that Justice was Served?
Hold on.
Was this a 9000+ word feghoot with a stealth punchline?
Extra word here.
reminds me of a sarcastic retort in a book: "i have no abilities but i have lots of needs."
reminds me of an old comic book, where one kid asks another, "what's a fragile?"
Hi Kris!
How I handled Retail...
DO. WHAT. THE. BOSSES. TELL. YOU. TO. My Autism actually helped. I did frak up a couple of times, though.