Eleven fictional viewpoints
These descriptions are fictional satire, not quotations or evidence of political beliefs or affiliations.
01 Wall Street Big Money Financier
The Author-Enforcer Gap, Measured in Lunches
We have devised the Author-Enforcer Gap: days between writing a rule and suing someone who broke it. The attorney general's office sued Marshfield, alleging it maintained a ticket-quota system, under a quota ban Schmitt had sponsored as a state senator; the settlement was a compliance program and training. Our gap is zero days. The head of trading wrote the best-execution policy, breaches it by lunch, and has already booked the training.
02 Silicon Valley / San Francisco Ivy League AI Founder
Endorsement Shipped With Three Valid Recipients
Three men named Eric entered one primary, and one endorsement said only 'ERIC.' The appraisal is flat: Schmitt was joined in the Republican primary by two other candidates with that name, and the message still shipped. Our founder spent four months on brand disambiguation for a product called Atlas, one of three Atlases in his category. He now considers ambiguity a distribution strategy and has asked Legal whether 'ATLAS' alone counts as a partnership announcement.
03 Venture Capital
Check One: Appointed or Actually Wanted
Fund Form 7-B asks one question: 'Placed by a predecessor, or chosen by customers? Check one.' Governor Mike Parson appointed Schmitt as Missouri attorney general in 2018, and a 2020 vote supplied the full term, so the associate ticks both boxes and calls it sequential. The partners demand an amendment letting every portfolio founder tick 'chosen' without being asked who made the introduction.
04 Institutional Investors
The Manager Whose Style Box Was a Map
The consultant clicks to a slide. 'Eight years, one mandate, no style drift: he represented the 15th district in the Missouri Senate from 2009 to 2017.' A trustee asks how the manager stayed inside the box. 'Someone else drew the box,' says the consultant. The chair proposes assigning every manager a district, then notices the committee's own boundaries have been redrawn at every meeting since March.
05 Data Center Operators
Budget the Translation, Then Wait for Water
Step 1: Budget for paperwork, not the pipe. The state spent $12,000 to translate the complaint into Chinese, and the defendants went unserved for over a year. Step 2: Notice our cooling-water study cost less than one translated cover letter. Step 3: Commission a glossy edition of the study in every language the water district does not read. Step 4: Ask for the line item covering actual water use. It says TBD.
06 Frontier Lab
Who Grades a Prompt Set in Public?
Critics said Schmitt made an error when he questioned former special counsel Jack Smith in a Senate hearing, which raises a lab question: when did anyone last grade a prompt in public? Our red team writes its probes in a private repo and scores them against a rubric no outsider has seen. If a hearing room can mark a line of questioning wrong on live television, why is our evaluation suite right only in secret? Who would publish the failed prompts?
07 Chinese Communist Party
Bureau Envies a Refusal With a Verb in It
The bureau reads with envy that a judge dismissed the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, in writing, with a reason attached. We dismiss complaints too, but ours arrive at a blank page: no verb, no named judge, no mention of sovereign immunity. The comparison is ironic. Their court explained its refusal at length, while our refusals are famously concise. A working group will study whether a no may contain a sentence.
08 American Union Worker
Footnote on a Docket and a Pattern
Schmitt filed 25 lawsuits against the Biden administration in a 20-month span, with mixed results.¹ In our plant, 25 grievances in 20 months would be labeled 'a pattern' by HR; in a courthouse the same arithmetic is called a docket.
¹ Mixed results are the usual result. The company's response to ours is a listening session, scheduled for after the machine that records it is repaired.
09 White Collar Professional in an AI-Threatened Group
Cure Claims Now Require Proof From the Patient
Schmitt sued televangelist Jim Bakker and Morningside Church Productions over a cure claim, which is more scrutiny than my vendor's 'Efficiency Elixir' has faced. It cures forty percent of our workload, says a banner. When I asked for substantiation, the burden reversed: I was asked to prove my own tasks were real, and my skepticism was logged as 'resistance to wellness.' The bottle remains unlabeled, and my review remains open.
10 American STEM Worker Over 45
Reading 46th as an Age, Literally
I read 'the 46th state treasurer' as a person's age, because at my firm 46 is where 'high potential' turns into 'institutional memory,' a title that comes with the oldest monitor. Taken literally, the Missouri job lasted two years, about how long our 'knowledge transfer' runs before the knowledge is transferred out. I admire any 46 who gets a numbered chair instead of an exit survey.
11 American STEM Graduate Five Years Out of College (Not Ivy League)
Memo Requesting Our Own Checkbook Website
TO: Compensation. RE: Our rotation program. Schmitt created the Show-Me Checkbook website which provides data on state spending, so we request a Show-Me Paycheck: bands, budgets, who got the headcount. HR replied with a portal showing cash flow for the break room, the pizza stipend and the plant fund. Please advise whether payroll is a state secret or merely a department.
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