Family Consequences – Frov Liop for Reuters

Apparently Complaining to Matt Has Consequences Even If You Are His Second Cousin

May 27, 2440

Claudia Chakrobarty, Age 14
Queen of Lists

I have learned several important things the last two week.

1. Becoming mildly famous is terrible for productivity.
2. More than one hundred young people showing up every day asking if they can work with you is flattering for approximately fifteen minutes.
3. Complaining to my father does not make the problem go away.
4. Complaining where Matthew Marmaduke can hear about it is considerably worse.

After some recent attention, people started showing up at Chakrobarty Farms wanting jobs, internships, work experience, tours, advice, recommendations, and apparently in several cases just something useful to do.

More than one hundred a day.

Every day.

I complained to Dad.

Dad mentioned it to Matt.

There are apparently consequences to complaining to Matt even when he is your second cousin.

I am now head of Chakrobarty Farms Human Resources.

I am fourteen.

This was not on my list.

It is now.

Under Freehold policy, the two aides assigned to help me are each paid $200 a day.

I am not paid anything.

I asked Dad about this obvious injustice.

He said working for your father builds character.

I have added “investigate labor law as it applies to your own parents” to my list.

My aides think this is hilarious because they receive $200 a day to watch me build character.

The actual problem is that we really do have a lot of young people looking for something useful to do.

Some want farm work. Some want office experience. Some want to learn equipment. Some want to work with animals. Some want internships. Some are V’ren trying to figure out what Earth employment looks like. Some are local kids who saw V’ren getting opportunities and realized nobody had actually stopped them from asking for the same thing.

This is good.

It is also a lot of paperwork.

So far my job mostly consists of making lists.

This is fortunate because I am extremely good at lists.

Current lists include:

1. People who want jobs.
2. People who want internships.
3. People who think they want farm jobs but have clearly never met livestock.
4. People who specifically want livestock jobs and therefore concern me.
5. People who can drive.
6. People who claim they can drive.
7. People Dad says absolutely cannot drive anything we own.
8. V’ren applicants.
9. Human applicants.
10. Applicants who filled out the wrong form.
11. Applicants who somehow filled out three forms.
12. People I need to call back.
13. People my aides need to call back.
14. People Dad has already hired without telling HR.

Number fourteen is becoming a problem.

I have explained to him that if I am Human Resources, humans are supposed to tell Resources when they acquire more humans.

He said I should put that on a list.

I already had.

The Freehold apparently wants young people working when appropriate, getting paid when they are doing actual jobs, and getting useful experience instead of being parked somewhere for appearances.

This means we are now trying to separate actual employment from internships, training, job shadowing, volunteer activities, and people who mostly want to spend a day at the farm because they saw somebody interesting online.

That last group is very large.

I understand T’mari’s page problem much better now.

People look adorable and manageable when there are four of them.

At one hundred a day they become an administrative system.

I also understand why Matt keeps giving people jobs after they complain.

It is extremely satisfying.

Someone told me yesterday that our intake process was confusing.

I asked how they would fix it.

They gave me six good suggestions.

They are helping redesign the intake sheet this afternoon.

I may be learning too much from my cousin.

My two aides have been excellent.

They keep track of appointments, answer questions, find people I have misplaced, and occasionally remind adults that yes, they really do have to wait because Claudia is currently talking to someone else.

Again, they make $200 a day.

I build character.

I am thinking about hiring someone to carry the spare clipboards.

Before anyone complains that this would be ridiculous, I currently have nine clipboards.

Three are missing.

One contains livestock applications.

One contains internship applications.

One contains a list of people who have borrowed my clipboards.

That list is also missing.

So perhaps clipboard management is an emerging leadership field.

Applicants may inquire with Human Resources.

That is me.

Apparently.

---

• @ClaudiaListStan: Fourteen years old, accidentally famous, running farm HR, managing two paid aides, and already weaponizing clipboards against bureaucracy. I have found my queen.
  • @MarshallMom: She was like this before anybody knew her name. Fame just gave the lists a larger target.
• @TinyExecutiveFan: “Humans are supposed to tell Resources when they acquire more humans” is the best HR policy statement of the century.
  • @ChakrobartyFarmhand: She said essentially that to her father in front of six employees. He told her to put it on a list. She already had.
• @ListGoblin2440: I would pay actual money for Claudia’s list of people who claim they can drive versus people Dad says absolutely cannot drive anything they own.
  • @SalineCountyTow: Those lists exist for reasons you do not want explained.
• @EarthVrenYouth: Local human girl sees 100+ kids asking for work and builds intake categories instead of telling everyone to go away. Respect.
  • @Camp17Dad: That’s basically how things work here right now. If fifty people show up wanting something useful to do, eventually somebody invents a form.
• @ClipboardCult: NINE CLIPBOARDS.
  THREE MISSING.
  ONE MISSING LIST OF WHO BORROWED THE CLIPBOARDS.
  This is literature.
  • @ArrowRockTeacher: You laugh, but she has already started numbering the replacements.
• @InternshipGremlin: Her aides make $200 a day while Claudia gets “character.” This is the most realistic family business story ever written by reality.
  • @MissouriFarmKid: Every farm child within 200 miles read that paragraph and nodded.
• @PayClaudiaNow: Justice for Claudia. Unionize against Dad.
  • @ChakrobartyNeighbor: She gets room, board, family money, access to basically everything on the farm, and the privilege of arguing with her father before breakfast. She will survive.
• @VrenPageWatcher: The funniest part is Claudia realizing T’mari’s page problem becomes different when four teenagers turn into a hundred applicants a day.
  • @NorthParkMom: Exactly. Four kids are adorable. One hundred kids are an intake system.
• @FarmTok2440: Can we please get Claudia reviewing applications from category 3: “people who think they want farm jobs but have clearly never met livestock.”
  • @MarshallFFA: Half of them will change their minds after one morning.
    • @FarmTok2440: And the other half?
      • @MarshallFFA: Those are the dangerous ones. We keep them.
• @FutureHRDirector: She is accidentally learning workforce planning, intake design, applicant triage, delegation, records control, and process improvement at fourteen.
  • @ColumbiaBusinessStudent: Around here we call that “Matt heard you complain.”
• @FreeholdYouthFan: The real story is local kids saw V’ren getting opportunities and realized they could just ask too.
  • @SalineCountyDad: That has happened everywhere. A surprising number of programs have begun with teenagers asking, “Can I do that?”
    • @KriegerLittleton: A surprising number of them are asking how do I talk to the cute sisters
      • @GregBest.Marshall: Did Krieger just say the sisters are cute as in plural?
        • @KriegerLittleton: Do I need to start name dropping?
          • @ArrowRockTattle: Yes, please…
• @NormalPersonDenver: Why are more than 100 young people a day showing up at one farm asking for jobs?
  • @RiverfrontVendor: Because things are happening here and young people notice opportunities faster than adults do.
• @HRProfessionalActual: Giving a fourteen-year-old control over hiring intake sounds insane.
  • @ChakrobartyFarmhand: She is not signing employment contracts alone. She is organizing applicants, scheduling, sorting placements, and telling her father to stop hiring people without informing her. Frankly, the last one is overdue since he has one guy three times under three different names.
• @LaborLawLarry: The phrase “I am not paid because working for Dad builds character” is doing a LOT of work.
  • @MissouriAttorneyMom: It is a family farm. Please resist the urge to internationalize a teenager being sarcastic about chores.
• @ChildLaborWatch2440: We have normalized fourteen-year-olds running HR now?
  • @ArrowRockParent: We normalized teenagers doing responsible work centuries ago. The question is whether the work is appropriate, supervised, and interfering with school. She is sorting applications, not running a blast furnace.
• @CoastalConcerned: Two aides making $200 a day to support an unpaid fourteen-year-old manager is a bizarre hierarchy.
  • @NylaChakrobarty: The aides are employees. Claudia is the owner’s daughter helping the family business. This is only mysterious if you’ve never been within fifty miles of a family farm.
• @EliteKidsEverywhere: Funny how every famous kid around Marmaduke immediately gets some impressive job title.
  • @MarshallTeacher: Claudia had responsibilities before the fame. The fame created the flood of applicants. The HR title is mostly everybody admitting she was already doing the work.
• @NepotismDetector: Second cousin of Marmaduke becomes “head of HR” at fourteen. Nothing to see here.
  • @ChakrobartyFarmNeighbor: For her father’s farm.
    She became head of organizing the people showing up at her father’s farm.
    The international conspiracy is widening.
    • @NotARealJob: Making lists is not HR.
      • @ActualHRMegan: Applicant intake, categorization, scheduling, assignment tracking, callback management, records control, and correcting managers who hire without notifying HR is depressingly HR.
• @BostonPolicyGuy: A hundred youths per day spontaneously seeking work suggests either severe labor-market distortion or manufactured enthusiasm.
  • @SalineCountyStoreOwner: Or there are suddenly 120,000-plus new neighbors from one ship, massive construction, new farms, new programs, and teenagers want money and something interesting to do.
    Sometimes the horse is just a horse.
• @AntiMarmadukeLeft: “Complain and you get assigned to fix it” sounds like a cute slogan until you realize it discourages criticism.
  • @ColumbiaGrad: You can complain all you want. The dangerous part is demonstrating that you actually know how to solve it.
• @NoTeenBosses: Imagine being an adult employee and having to report to a fourteen-year-old because her dad owns the company.
  • @ChakrobartyFarmhand: Nobody is reporting to Claudia on crop planning or livestock operations. If you want an application sorted, though, yes, talk to the kid with the clipboard. She knows where everything is.
    Usually.
• @FreeholdCultMonitor: Everyone in these replies acts like this is adorable because Marmaduke-adjacent families are allowed to do whatever they want.
  • @ArrowRockMechanic: No, we act like it’s funny because a fourteen-year-old complained about too many applicants and got handed filing responsibility.
    You’ve turned paperwork into tyranny again.
• @VerySeriousJournalist: The casual normalization of adolescent labor inside politically connected family enterprises deserves considerably more scrutiny than “haha clipboards.”
  • @LocalReporterJen: Then scrutinize it. Start with what she actually does, what hours she works, what authority she has, whether school is affected, and who supervises her. Do not begin with a headline and work backward.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty: I don’t provide breakfast to reporters unless you have done something useful first.
• @DefinitelyNotATroll: Breaking: feudal princess appointed Minister of Clipboards after peasant mob begs aristocratic farm for work.
  • @MuleBarnMike: Breaking: farmer’s daughter helps Dad organize job applications.
    More at eleven.
    • @DefinitelyNotATroll: Your version gets fewer clicks.
      • @MuleBarnMike: That’s probably why you don’t live here.