“Who the hell changed the screw tolerance by 0.007 mm?”

“I did. Is there a problem?”

Kimmy Zabel, our department’s “good-luck charm” and full-time slacktivist, did not even look up from her compact mirror, where she was carefully applying lip gloss.

“It just didn’t look right, so I tweaked it. Do you really have to yell at me?”

The production line had been running on the wrong spec for twenty-four hours. I hit the emergency stop.

Keeping my voice steady took some effort.

“These parts no longer meet export standards. If we miss tomorrow’s shipment, even a month of overtime wouldn’t cover the penalties.”

“It’s one tiny number. You’re being so dramatic!”

Kimmy snapped her makeup case shut. “Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got a date. I’m not staying here to suffer with you people.”

Before she even reached the door, I gestured to the staff to pull the shutters down.

“For precision components like these, one number translates into a million-dollar loss. You can take these defective units and explain them to the regulators.”

Kimmy Zabel froze for a split second before protesting in return.

“Don’t go on a power trip just because you can! I just lowered it by 0.007 mm. What could that possibly do? It still screws in, doesn’t it?”

To prove her point, she grabbed a screw off the table and casually drove it into a piece of wood.

With a smug look, she said, “See? No difference at all! You’re just looking for trouble because my job isn’t as much of a grind as yours.”

I picked up the standards manual with a sneer.

“The buyer for this batch is an international firm. Their classifications are stricter. Twenty-eight TPI means a pitch of 0.907 mm. This spec is used for precision equipment. Your tiny adjustment of 0.007 mm could cause cross-threading or strip the mating socket, leading to critical equipment failure. They won’t just fail customs inspection. If we miss the delivery window, we’re looking at massive breach penalties, and our company’s reputation gets shredded. You call that ‘looking for trouble’?”

One look at the confusion in Kimmy’s eyes told me her brain was not built to process anything this complicated.

Sure enough, the next second, she pouted and looked at me.

“Don’t think even for a moment that you can scare me with a bunch of fancy technical jargon! I’ll call someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. Let’s see if you still dare pick on me like this after that!”

The call connected almost instantly.

The noisy backdrop of a bar flooded through the speaker.

“Kimmy, where are you? I’ve been waiting.”

Kimmy’s tone instantly shifted to wounded innocence.

“Mr. Huidobro, I tried to leave early, but Ms. Turner wouldn’t let me go. She’s saying tomorrow’s shipment is going to fail because of me.”

“That’s preposterous!”

Dale Huidobro’s bark was sharp even through the phone. “Put her on the phone. I’ll talk to her myself.”

Kimmy put the phone on speaker.

She shot me a triumphant look that said, “Let’s see how you get out of this!”

“Mr. Huidobro, Kimmy altered the production specs without authorization. The entire run is now out of spec with the international standards—”

Dale cut me off before I could finish.

“Lisa, it seems you still don’t understand your place. Kimmy is our human good-luck charm. I brought her in for a reason. The fact that she even graces the production floor should be considered a blessing. And you dare upset her? If her energy turns sour, the entire company’s fortune could follow. Are you prepared to be responsible for that?”

I was aware that most successful executives harbored their own superstitions.

However, instead of worrying about hypothetical bad energy, we should have been trying to fix the disaster right in front of us.

I was just about to explain when Kimmy jumped in, “That’s exactly what I told Ms. Turner, Mr. Huidobro. But she kept throwing technical jargon at me to scare me. She even implied that the company would be cursed with bad luck. I had no choice but to ask you to step in.”

In eighteen years on the job, I had never seen anyone twist the truth with such ease.

Rationality told me there was no point in engaging with her any further. What mattered was making the consequences unmistakably clear.

I pulled out the contract and tapped the relevant clause.

“Mr. Huidobro, this isn’t about ‘curses.’ If we fail to deliver tomorrow, the client has the right to demand compensation for triple damages under the agreement. The client is a global industry leader. If we blow this order, we won’t just lose one contract but also lose access to the entire transatlantic market. The losses wouldn’t even be calculable.”

Dale was the boss’ brother-in-law. He parachuted into the company from nowhere and was handed authority he had never earned.

He liked to throw his weight around, but when it came to money, no one clutched it tighter than him.

I thought laying out the stakes would finally get his attention. Instead, he let out a dismissive snort.

“But none of that’s happened yet, has it? If it weren’t for Kimmy gracing the production floor with her presence, do you think we’d even have these orders? And whether production gets done or not, that’s your problem. Don’t even think about pinning this on Kimmy. If we fail to deliver tomorrow, I’ll be holding you responsible!”

I almost laughed from sheer disbelief.

That contract had taken our sales team three months of nonstop follow-ups to secure. What did Kimmy have to do with it?

Ever since she had started hanging around the workshop, she had only made things harder.

I gritted my teeth.

“Mr. Huidobro, I’ll not ship defective parts. The regulators won’t clear them anyway.”

The sound of laughter and clinking glasses from the bar grew louder over the line.

Dale said in impatience, “I hired you to solve problems, not create them. Let me ask you something simple: Do you still want your job or not?”

Back then, it was Dale’s brother-in-law, Michael Gugino himself, who recruited me with a salary twenty percent above industry standard.

He said he needed someone with an uncompromising eye for quality control.

I took a deep breath.

“Mr. Huidobro, if this is something you can’t resolve, then I’ll have to escalate it to Mr. Gugino.”

That only made him angrier.

“Lisa, going over my head is a serious career-limiting move. And Michael is bedridden right now. If this stresses him out and worsens his condition, can you take responsibility for that? This production bay is under my authority now. You running to him makes me look incompetent. Stay right where you are. I’m coming down there myself.”

Dale stormed into the production bay not long after.

The first thing he did was have someone snatch my phone out of my hand.

“I have zero patience for people who can’t understand the chain of command.”

He dropped into a chair and said mockingly, “So, what’s this supposedly world-ending crisis that just had to be escalated?”

I could hear his irritation underneath every word he uttered.

Swallowing my pride, I explained how Kimmy had altered the production specs.

Dale fell silent for a moment. Then, he asked, “Kimmy, why did you do that?”

I thought that he was finally listening.

“Because my numerologist said I shouldn’t be exposed to too many decimal points, or it’ll negate my wealth-attracting energy.”

Then, Kimmy slipped her arm through Dale’s.

“You’ve said the floor’s margins are shrinking. But I’ve been here for so long, and everyone talks about how capable Ms. Turner is. It doesn’t add up. I think Ms. Turner has been exaggerating specs on purpose, adding an extra 0.007 mm to every screw. Multiply that by a million units, and that’s at least $7,000 right there. Over a year, that’s a lot of money.”

Everyone could tell she was implying that I embezzled money.

Several workers spoke up for me at once.

“Mr. Huidobro, Ms. Turner isn’t that kind of person.”

“Ms. Turner’s very responsible. Maybe others would pull something like that, but she never would!”

“Ms. Turner pays for overtime meals out of her own pocket. She wouldn’t even take a bottle of water from us. Someone like that wouldn’t skim.”

Most of them were veterans I had brought over from my old team.

We had worked together for years.

I could feel a tightness in my throat.

Standing up for me at a moment like this meant that they were risking their own jobs.

Kimmy snorted and said, “Doesn’t that prove Ms. Turner looks down on pocket change like yours? Mr. Huidobro, she even threatened you with the chairman. I think that’s suspicious. I’d say her finances deserve a closer inspection.”

Dale had been looking for an excuse to make an example out of me. He seized it instantly.

“Audit her. Audit everything.”

He ordered the production bay to keep running through the night. The shipment had to go out on schedule the next morning.

A few senior workers tried to argue, but Dale cut them off.

“Anyone who doesn’t want to work can walk out right now. But if you’re quitting voluntarily, you can forget about your severance and overtime pay.”

Everyone had been grinding for a full month for this order.

Losing their jobs and their overtime meant that their families would suffer.

No one said another word.

I raised my voice.

“Mr. Huidobro, the screws produced yesterday are defective. We can’t…”

Before I could finish, Dale made someone clamp a hand over my mouth and drag me away.

He locked me inside the storage room.

It was not long before compliance officers arrived.

As the whistleblower, Kimmy came with them.

She pointed at me.

“I’ve seen Lisa slipping money to people in Finance.”

“Do you have any proof?”

“Yes, I do. Here!”

In the photo Kimmy pulled up, I was handing a thick manila envelope to a member of the accounting staff.

The compliance officers’ expressions hardened immediately.

“Lisa, how do you explain this?”

I leaned in for a closer look.

I explained that it had been a staff fundraiser. I had gone to the hospital as their representative to deliver the donation.

However, the angle of the photo was deliberate.

There was no hospital signage. There was just me handing over the cash.

The officer adjusted his glasses.

“We’ll verify what you’ve said. Now, let’s talk about the alleged falsification of financial records.”

I had no choice but to walk them through the entire situation again.

The compliance officers were all long-timers. They were people who had been with the company before Michael fell ill, and from a time before Dale had a chance to pull them onto his side.

After hearing everything, they left.

My old apprentice, Ned Morita, slipped into the storage room.

He told me that Kimmy had taken the story online.

Kimmy had been cultivating her “office lucky charm” persona online for years and had built a modest following of people who envied her seemingly effortless, well-paid lifestyle.

Just then, she posted a new video.

She went into detail about how she had uncovered a major management failure and supposedly saved the company from a massive loss.

The comment section flooded instantly.

[Oh my god! She’s lucky and competent? The office lucky charm is actually real!]

[That floor manager got exactly what she deserved. Who tries to take on the office mascot? Enjoy the investigation, loser.]

[Exactly! How dare she try to mess with the human lucky charm? Now they’re investigating her for embezzlement! Bad luck has got to her.]

[She had it coming. My parents work in the production bay. They work nonstop, and then they get screwed over by people like her. When targets aren’t met, it’s their pay that gets hit.]

[People like her are disgusting! If I ever saw her on the street, I’d hit her.]

A handful of comments defended me, but they were drowned in minutes by the algorithmic tide of outrage.

I felt a chill spread through my veins as I read the vicious comments.

The force of public opinion was overwhelming. Kimmy was trying to end my career.

Forcing myself to think clearly, I turned to Ned.

“Pull the surveillance footage from the production floor and everything that happened earlier, especially the moment Kimmy changed the specs. Also, pull up the footage of the confrontation with me afterward. Don’t bother with Dale. He’s a lost cause. Go through my desk drawer and find Michael’s card. Tell him what’s been happening on the floor.”

Ned looked anxious.

“Lisa, I can get the security footage, but your office has been locked. I can’t get in.”

“You have to find a way. Right now, the only person who can stop Mr. Huidobro is Michael.”

Ned told me he understood and hurried out.

After the compliance officers were sent off, Kimmy doubled back.

She took in my disheveled state and curled her lips into a smile.

“Lisa, everyone knows Mr. Huidobro values me. Don’t you think you brought this on yourself?”

She pulled out the industry reports I had compiled and began idly defacing them with a pen.

“What’s the point of all this work, Lisa? All I have to do is open my mouth, and it carries more weight than anything you do. Mr. Huidobro put me in charge of overseeing production. Sure, I’ll miss the New Year’s Eve celebration, but taking you down makes it worth it!”

I could not understand it.

All I had done was focus on work. I could not understand where her hostility toward me was coming from.

Every time I assigned production tasks, she either interrupted or nitpicked.

Once, just to beat me to the office, she clipped my car in the parking lot.

Whenever anyone praised my work, she found a way to step in and take credit.

Seeing my confusion, malice flickered in Kimmy’s eyes.

“Oh, drop the act, Lisa! You’ve looked down on me since day one. You’ve got skills, sure, but you’ve always thought I only got this job because I brought in good luck. That takes work, too, you know. And since you wouldn’t let me lower the tolerance, I adjusted the strength ratings instead. The bolts marked 4.8, 8.8, 12.8? I bumped them up to 5, 9, and 13. That should shut you up, shouldn’t it?”

I was genuinely stunned.

Those numbers represented tensile strength.

If those specs were altered to exceed the maximum classification, the component would not hold under load. It could lead to a catastrophic structural collapse.

“Kimmy, you’ve messed up big time! Those specifications cannot be changed!”

I stood up immediately to rush out. I had to tell them to stop the production.

Mistaking my urgency for an attempt to flee, Kimmy called for the guards.

“Restrain her, and shut her up! Mr. Huidobro said she’s to stay here until this investigation is over!”