Scumbucket, my dear little cupcake,
Your last communique speaks of your impatience with certain aspects of your work. How, you ask, can you be expected to keep track of an ever-increasing caseload when you are, as ordered, spending so much time hovering over hospitals and homes for the elderly, where the patients are more often than not drugged into insensibility, or at least so addled that no meaningful interaction with them (i.e., tempting) is even possible?
Dear, dear Scumbucket, don't get your tail into a knot about this. You are performing very valuable service when you are on this sort of duty. Do not fear (at least, not much) -- we here in Lower Management realize exactly the burden we are placing on you, and allowances are made when I file my reports on your performance (about which, by the way, we will need to talk soon). When you are on duty in these sorts of contexts, you are performing a duty not unlike that of what the humans call scarecrows -- keeping away those who would snatch the results of our years of work from under our very noses, and just at the moment of harvest. As a human slips into senility, they can regain a certain innocence and trusting attitude that is very unnerving to us -- that can, in fact, almost assure that they will be lost to us forever. If, however, we can get to them in the right way beforehand, play on their fears as the night grows closer, we can get even the most devout believer to conclude that they have been abandoned -- and then our task is simply to keep them from ever waking up, in any sense, to any other possibility.
This time in a human's life is a crucial one indeed, Scumbucket, and anything can happen. Extreme vigilance is the rule. It is not infrequent that some human, awake on their deathbed, will see the light -- that ugly, repulsive Light! -- at the very last moment, and reach out to their deliverer. You will never know the true meaning of frustration, dear Scumbucket, until such a moment. Be sure it never happens -- because, as you know, even worse things shall follow for you if it does.
Furthermore, Scumbucket, do not be blind to the other opportunities available to you at these places. Overworked staffers, desperate families, bereft friends -- all of these people become exceptionally vulnerable when subjected to the stresses that we have assiduously built into the system. The staffers, overwhelmed and underpaid, can be made callous and uncaring, and effect the most exquisite tortures completely unawares, as they try to just survive another shift. Family members watching the simultaneous depletion of a loved one's faculties and of their own bank accounts -- what a delicious spectacle! And you, Scumbucket, get to snack on all the grief, terror and bewilderment being experienced, like a human in front of his refrigerator sampling leftovers at midnight. I almost envy you. (You understand now, I trust, why we have worked so hard to ensure that the humans' health care system not be changed a whit.)
At some other time, I must write to you concerning this Kevorkian fellow -- he is dangerous to our plans, and something will have to be done. The matter is presently under discussion here in Lower Management, and I will keep you informed. In the meantime -- get back to work.
As ever,
Screwdisk