The Goblin HR Incident

When Jade applied for an internship at Glower & Blight, LLC, she didn’t realize “arcane logistics” meant babysitting goblins. The job posting had been vague (“Must thrive in chaos! Dental plan includes dragon-scale polishing!”), but student loans wait for no one.

On her first day, she was handed a clipboard, a fire extinguisher, and a stern warning: “Don’t feed the photocopier after midnight.”

“It’s a Xerox demon,” explained her supervisor, Gary, a gnome with a necktie longer than his body. “It gets peckish.”

Jade stared at the photocopier, which growled and spat out a paper jam shaped like a middle finger.

“Welcome to Hell’s cubicle farm,” Gary said cheerfully.

By week two, Jade had mastered the basics:

- How to bribe the coffee machine with goat blood (it preferred oat milk but “wouldn’t complain”).

- Why accounting was run by a coven of retired witches (“Tax law is basically curses anyway”).

- Which bathroom stalls were haunted (“Avoid stall three—it’s got a sulky poltergeist”).

But her real test came during the Monday morning meeting.

“Jade,” droned Mr. Glower, the CEO and part-time bridge troll, “fetch the coffee. Black. Like my soul.”

The break room was a minefield. The fridge hissed. The microwave hummed Ave Maria. And the coffee maker, a sentient French press named Clive, was moody.

“One black coffee, please,” Jade said.

Clive burbled. “Define ‘black.’”

“Just… coffee.”

“Existential. I like it.” Clive spat out a tar-like sludge.

Jade carried the cup carefully, but a passing imp bumped her elbow. The coffee splashed onto the conference table’s rune carvings.

The room shook. A pillar of smoke erupted, and suddenly, there was a man in a three-piece suit standing on the table.

“WHO DARES SUMMON ZALTHOR, DEMIGOD OF PETTY GRIEVANCES?”

Gary raised his hand. “Uh, that was decaf, right?”

Zalthor, it turned out, was bound by ancient law to fulfill one “workplace request” before returning to his realm.

“I WISH TO FILE A COMPLAINT,” Zalthor announced, materializing a clipboard. “RE: Unresolved Ticket #666. Eternal damnation is less bureaucratic than your IT department.”

Mr. Glower turned puce. “You can’t audit us! We outsourced our sins to a subcontractor!”

Jade raised a tentative hand. “What if we… resolve his complaint?”

Zalthor’s eyes glowed. “TRY.”

The complaint? Zalthor’s infernal printer hadn’t had magenta ink since the Cretaceous period.

“That’s our printer,” Gary realized, checking the serial number. “We bought it secondhand from a necromancer.”

The printer in question was a hulking relic that ate staplers and screamed in Aramaic when jammed. Jade approached it with a sacrificial toner cartridge.

“Hey, buddy,” she cooed. “Let’s make a deal.”

The printer hissed. “I REQUIRE… BLOOD.”

“How about a LinkedIn endorsement?”

“…ACCEPTABLE.”

With the printer pacified, Zalthor departed—but not before leaving a five-star Yelp review (“Hell’s customer service is better, but 4/10 for effort”).

Jade’s victory was short-lived.

“YOU!” roared Mr. Glower, pointing a claw at her. “Fix the other HR disaster!”

He meant Bob from Sales, a werewolf who’d accidentally locked himself in the supply closet during a full moon. Again.

“I’m not HR,” Jade protested.

“You’re holding a fire extinguisher. Close enough.”

Bob, in wolf form, had chewed through the shelves and was now wearing a cape of Post-it notes.

“Nice cape,” Jade said, tossing him a SlimJim from her pocket. Bob wagged his tail, then sneezed glitter.

Gary peered in. “We’ll dock it from his paycheck. Also, the demigod’s back.”

Zalthor stood in the lobby, holding a parking ticket. “YOUR VISITOR SPACE IS A PIT OF DESPAIR.”

Jade handed him a lollipop from reception. “We’re working on it.”

Epilogue

Jade got promoted to “Senior Chaos Mitigator.” Clive the coffee maker got a raise (“For artistic integrity”). Bob got a chew toy and a promotion to “Director of Howling Opportunities.”

As for Zalthor? He pops in every tax season to complain about infernal paperwork.

And the photocopier? Still an a hole.