Precious Goods looked up from the paperwork on her desk at the sound of a knock on her office door. Because the door was open and ponies would just walk in, it was immediately obvious who had announced their presence.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Van Dijk?”
The Abyssinian stalked into the office, her lashing tail indicative of her mood. “We have a problem. Demand for the room-temperature superconductor has exceeded expectations and our stock has been exhausted already. It isn’t even the end of the week and we can’t meet the orders that our customers have placed.”
“We already have that team working full-time on that product. We can’t produce more any faster.”
“How many unicorns are working the spell to produce it?”
“Three – Patient Hooves, Crimson Style, and Artful Twist.”
Michelle huffed. “Only three ponies for such a high-value product? Why don’t we assign more to that task?”
“Creating the correct molecular matrix to enable the material to superconduct is an extremely tricky enchantment. Only those three have mastered it, and even then not every batch is a success.” Precious opened a drawer and pulled out a file. “Here are my records on their output. I can send you PDF copies if you wish.”
The cat woman took the proffered files and started looking through them. Her frown deepened and her whiskers twitched. She threw one of the pages onto the desk. “This tells me that Artful Twist has a twenty-three percent greater failure rate than the other two. That is unacceptable!”
Precious Goods shrugged helplessly. “It is what it is. He works hard but applying the enchantment is tricky and miscasts occur because it takes a lot of concentration over a long period.”
“He? Artful Twist is a stallion? What about the other two?”
“Both are mares,” the earth pony replied.
“Why am I not surprised. Let’s go visit this slacker stallion. I want to have a few words with him.”
Precious scowled. “That isn’t necessary, Ms. Van Dijk.”
“I’ll decide that, Ms. Goods.”
Michelle exited the office and Precious trotted to catch up to the feline. They made their way to the section of the factory devoted to the production of the superconducting wire. There was a line of equipment that took the raw materials and combined them in precise ratios before heating them into a semi-molten material. That flowed into a reservoir with six output tubes, although only three of them were in use. The mixture passed through extruders that forced a stream of composite into vats of liquid nitrogen. The fluid boiled furiously as the material rapidly cooled while three unicorns stationed at each stared intensely at the wire through a window, their horns glowing brightly. Rollers brought the metal thread out of the vats and onto a conveyer where fans blew air over it to bring its temperature up. It slid over contacts that confirmed that it was superconductive. Then, no longer brittle from the extreme cold, it passed through rollers that formed the finished wire and coiled onto spools. These were kept air-conditioned to ensure that the material never approached critical temperature.
Precious held out a hoof to prevent Michelle from interrupting the workers. “Be quiet,” she whispered. “This is the crucial phase of the process. They’re controlling the formation of the crystal structure as it cools. You could ruin the entire batch if you break their concentration.”
The Abyssinian humphed but stayed back as directed. “What happens to the dud material?” she asked softly while they waited.
“Since the superconductive properties can’t be restored, it gets thrown back in with raw material to try again.”
It was only a couple of minutes before the run was complete and all three unicorns ceased casting with sighs of relief. When the last of the wire passed the superconductivity test, Precious nodded in satisfaction.
“Well done, everypony. That’s another three spools completed.” She looked at Michelle and nodded.
The Abyssinian frowned. “Mr. Twist, I wish to have words with you!”
The stallion yawned as he raised his drooping head. “Right now? I need a break.”
“What you need to do is pick up your game. I’ve just seen the stats and I’m very unsatisfied with your performance. Your failure rate is completely unacceptable. If these two mares can consistently and significantly out-produce you, then you must be doing something wrong.”
Artful Twist’s widened as he stared at Michelle in disbelief, then he glared. “Ma’am, you’re not a unicorn and have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t need to have a horn – I just need to see the figures. Since you have been part of the production team, you have performed an average of twenty-three percent worse than your co-workers. By now, you should be close to being on par with them, but I suppose that’s too much to expect of a male.”
His two co-workers gasped. Crimson Style got up from her chair and marched up to Michelle until she was practically in her face. “Who do you think you are? That’s no way to talk to a stallion!”
“I’m the district sales manager and I have customers to satisfy. I can’t do that if I don’t have the goods that I promised, can I?”
“He’s doing the best that he can. He doesn’t deserve your disrespect!”
Artful said, “Give it a rest, Crimson. Seems like the kitty-cat doesn’t like me and doesn’t think I’m up to the job, so I’ll just make her happy and quit. Ms. Goods – I’m going back to my old job. No bonus is big enough to put up with these horseapples.” He then picked up a lunchbox next to him in his magic and trotted away.
Patient Hooves jumped up and began following him. “Don’t go, Art! Ignore that bitch.”
“Hey! Don’t you dare call me urk—” Michelle’s words were cut off as her arm was grabbed and Precious Goods dragged her rapidly away.
“Shut up, you bucking fool! You just managed to cut our production down by at least a third. You think we’re running only three of the six stations because we like it? Casting that enchantment is specialist work and extremely difficult. We only managed to persuade Artful Twist to take the job with the promise of a big bonus. Not to mention the prospect of working beside the two mares who are courting him! You managed to buck up weeks of building up his confidence in just a few sentences. How in Tartarus did you ever get your position with an attitude like that?”
“Let go of me!” Michelle demanded, her ears folded down in ire. “You can’t treat your boss like this.”
Precious abruptly stopped and wheeled around to face the Abyssinian. “My boss? Are you an idiot? You run the Earth-side operations with Mr. Davis – you coordinate with me, this factory’s manager. I answer to the Martines, not to you.” She pointed in the direction of the portal room. “Go back to Houston, Ms. Van Dijk. I’m going to try to undo the damage you’ve caused. Hopefully, I won’t have to contend with a walk-out by the mares too.” She then cantered off to find the unicorns.
Michelle fumed, her tail lashing. She eventually headed to the portal as directed, defiantly mumbling, “We’ll see what Rosa has to say about this!”
Rosa Martine had more than a little to say about it the situation. Michelle realized that the Latina was no less fierce and frightening as a small human than as a large griffon. She no longer wondered why she assumed that form when in Equestria. The frequent inclusions of Rosa’s native Spanish clued Michelle into how upset her boss was right now.
“…and I’m now regretting urging mi esposo to consider you for this position. I believed that you could do better in an environment where mares greatly outnumbered the sementales. But no! That wasn’t good enough for you. You had to attack the one male whose lesser performance threatened to upset your sales. And I’ve seen those figures, Ms. Van Dijk. You’ve sold mucho superconductor wire – roughly half as much again as our peak production of that material. You’re making promises of delivery times that Harmonic Composites can’t keep!”
“You hired me to grow the business. That can only happen if ponies like Artful Twist get their act together,” Michelle objected.
“So you think you could get him to perform better by humiliating him in front of his marefriends?”
“I didn’t know they were his girlfriends, and besides, they shouldn’t be fraternizing—”
“Stop right there! If this was happening here in America with humans, it would only be a problem if one managed the other two. However, that is Equestria where the major portion of the population consists of caballos – ponies – a species that thinks and interacts socially in a very different way than humans. What you call fraternizing is totally acceptable behavior for them. Far from being a distraction, Patient Hooves and Crimson Style have encouraged Artful Twist to bring up his actuación and increase his output. Now, they’ve threatened to walk out in support of Señor Twist.”
“I still think those mares overreacted,” Michelle replied sulkily.
Rosa slapped herself on the head. “Ay, yi, yi! How are you so dense?! Ponies have a matriarchal society because the mares greatly outnumber the stallions. Machos are a limited resource, so the hembras are extremely protective of them. By threatening their stallion, even if only by insultos, you were effectively doing the same to them! Phillipe had to play peacemaker to half the mares in the factory over that incident.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
“No, you blinded yourself to it. Mi esposo and I tolerated your attitude toward men before now because you didn’t let it get out of hand here in America. However, I’m beginning to think that sending you to Equestria was a mala decisión. I’ll remind you that you are on probation and any more incidents like this will not be tolerated. Precious Goods has requested that you be banned from her factory. For now, we will comply. You may still visit Equestria but stay completely out of our operations there. You will communicate only by telephone or email. Tyrone will handle any interactions en persona in Equestria until further notice. ¿Comprendes?”
“Yes, Mrs. Martine,” Michelle acknowledged quietly.
“Good.” Rosa headed out of Michelle’s office. “And, Ms. Van Dijk, as you say – get your act together.”
Michelle’s mood was still sour by the end of the day and she made a beeline for “The Bucking Mare” to have a few drinks. She met an eighteen-year-old mare who was disgruntled at something the cat woman couldn’t care less about but pretended to sympathize with anyway. They eventually went back to the mare’s place to have some angry sex. As she lay in bed afterward, Michelle could only dwell on how a male had effectively screwed her even more than this mare had just done.
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