The CEO Is a Very Good Dog
A compliance officer accidentally appoints an office dog as chief executive. The dog improves everything until investors demand that he learn to be ruthless.
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How it begins
The new chief executive ate the conflict-of-interest declaration.
Vera had printed it on the expensive paper.
"Does that count as abstention?" Anton asked.
Under the boardroom table, Pickle considered the remaining corner.
He was a good dog. Seven years old, mostly terrier, generally opposed to lifts. He had entered senior management at ten that morning because Vera had needed a name for the test account.
The system had sent a contract.
The contract had been signed with the director's saved credentials.
Nobody wanted to discuss that part.
"We can reverse it," Anton said.
"Then reverse it."
"The system requires authorization."
"From whom?"
They both looked under the table.
Pickle stood up and went to the door.
For the next twenty minutes, the board followed him around the building.
He stopped at the warehouse entrance, where the ramp had been blocked by a delivery nobody had accepted. Two directors moved it.
He stopped at the staff kitchen, where the tap had been leaking for six months. Anton called maintenance.
He stopped beside a packing assistant who had been crying quietly behind a stack of chair cushions.
For the first time all week, somebody asked whether she needed a break.
At noon, Pickle returned to the boardroom and slept.
Vera began compiling the reversal paperwork.
Anton read the figures on his tablet.
"Interesting."
"What?"
"Warehouse clearance. Maintenance response. Staff satisfaction."
"He's been here two hours."
"Yes."
The telephone rang.
The investors had heard about the interim appointment. They wanted to meet him on Friday and discuss a leaner operating structure.
Pickle opened one eye.
Vera looked at the half-eaten declaration, the blocked calendar and the people outside whose names the old chief executive had never learned.
"Friday," she said, "may be difficult."
Anton lifted his pen.
"What shall I tell them?"
Vera looked under the table again.
"He's taking the whole company for a walk."
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Outline and characters
Develop this idea
The comic engine in this workplace-satire idea is a sensible animal moving through an organization that has forgotten ordinary needs. Give the dog consistent behavior and let the humans create the nonsense around it. Vera's mistake should reveal a governance loophole, not grant a pet magical business knowledge. For your own book, choose a particular industry with physical routines readers can picture. A strong ending leaves the workers with real power rather than merely a more lovable boss.
- Vera enters the office dog as acting chief executive during a systems test
- A valid digital signature makes the appointment legally difficult to reverse
- The dog's routine improves breaks and warehouse access
- Anton's cost model shows absenteeism falling
- Investors demand a productivity demonstration
- A proposed merger threatens to transfer the dog and dismiss his staff
- Vera discovers human directors used the test to evade responsibility
- The dog disrupts a scripted board presentation by following a distressed worker
- Staff use the voting rules to appoint accountable human leadership
- The dog returns to an ordinary job with protected lunch breaks
Characters
- Vera Linn, 36. Compliance officer who accidentally gives a dog corporate authority
- Anton Bale, 52. Finance director who discovers the dog's decisions outperform his
Series possibilities
- Vera audits a subsidiary where the warehouse workers have voted to make the vending machine chair of the board.
