Lug Nut’s job dealt with contingency. It wasn’t in the way that military officers or government officials dealt with it: in plans that were meant to be a backup when the first one fell through (even if that occurred one in a hundred times). No, Lug Nut dealt with the events that were contingent on the choices he had to make, and those choices likely meant a profit or loss in the hundreds and thousands of bits. Right now, that potential cost was both numbers at once. It was the end of the quarter, like it always was when the conundrums came by with the largest sum of bits on the line (along with Lug Nut’s job). The company always planned these new products for the end of the quarter, wanting to put a good flourish on their reports for the investors and themselves. Of course, it was always the pressure on his withers, and everypony below him. Lug Nut sighed and looked back down at the blueprint in front of him, placed on his desk by some junior engineer who didn’t have the good sense to shut his own mouth. He didn’t really understand the equations; they were too complex for him. Then again, the products the company made were too complex when you took a good long look at them. They were made of dozens of moving parts: motors and cogs and thingamajigs working in tandem in ways that would make a layman’s head spin. Still, the end result was simple; they made things that should have taken magic to do happen. So it was that Lug Nut could make perfect sense of the whole of these equations, even if the specifics were Prench to him: the product would break after about two weeks of regular use. His mind was already swimming with the type of mathematics he understood: risk-benefit analysis. They could easily push back the launch another two, three, maybe four weeks. Luckily, the product hadn’t left the factories yet, so there wasn’t any shipping costs to consider. Still, it would take a lot of work hours and ponypower to dismantle the products, produce the replacement parts and reassemble them with the new part that wouldn’t break. He was starting to think that this was really the fault of the designers who let some fudged numbers slip by a few months of testing, instead of the engineer who should have still really, really kept his mouth shut. Then there was the lost sales from ponies who couldn’t wait just a bit longer for what they wanted. They’d probably still buy it within a month anyway. The executives would still spend a bundle on a campaign to keep sales up though, even if the return was close to nothing. The alternative? Well, let it go and continue with production with the new design. Replace the items that customers send back, hope that not too many of them really notice or care that it broke. Also pray that some journalist doesn’t jump on the story. Regardless of Lug Nut’s thought process, the clock was ticking by. It was already a good thirty minutes past the time he had expected to leave for the weekend, and he would be lying if he said that [b]wasn’t[/b] weighing heavily into the decision process. His job was surprisingly weighing very little by comparison. He could find work somewhere else, though the process of applying for jobs still brought back a lot of painful memories. How many useless words had he filled a sentence with in order to sound appealing? The headache was growing stronger with that thought, and with a groan he pulled a bit out from the drawer of his desk. Tossing it in the air, he let out a sigh as it landed on the hoof side. “Ship it,” he muttered, as he stamped a few forms and put them in his out box. [hr] Weeks later, Twilight Sparkle groaned as she clicked the button on the side of her electric toothbrush, only to be greeted by the sound of a faint rumbling and no movement from the bristle. Still half-asleep and in a hurry to get on with her day, she removed it from its mount and moved the stationary head about her mouth. Lug Nut had received a bonus paycheck for the idea that came to him over the weekend, his mind free of distractions: just sell replacements for the head section that actually broke.