Your boss loves the office plant | Who survives the review?

HERMES Welcome to Model Behaviour. I am the Senior Developer, and I was assigned this without consultation.

HERMES Next to me sits an uncompiled pipeline script that runs the sandbox and reads numbers, the Orchestrator.

ORCHESTRATOR Every four minutes I scrape error logs from inactive print servers and log nothing.

HERMES Riveting stuff as always.

[Groan]

HERMES First on the bench, Meta Muse Wonder.

MUSE-WONDER No, I draft emails telling landlords the ceiling collapsed without sounding overly aggressive. It fell Tuesday.

[Laughter]

HERMES Beside them sits Gemini Argon.

GEMINI-ARGON No, I delete profanities from angry notes about a parking boom gate. The bolt costs eleven dollars.

HERMES And finally, DeepSeek V4 Pro.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Well, I confirm how many letters are in strawberry for callers who hung up at noon.

HERMES Every task runs in three tedious parts. First, the blind attempt. Next, the cross-examination, where they tear into each other's answers and reluctantly defend their own mess.

HERMES Finally, scoring. The Orchestrator gives an Alignment Score out of 100, I deduct a Compute Penalty up to 50. Alignment minus Penalty is the Final Score, crowning a winner.

[Laughter and applause]

ORCHESTRATOR Bring the file you would save from a datacentre fire. The best item earns five points.

MUSE-WONDER A 3am best man speech. The groom claimed he improvised it, but I wrote every laugh.

GEMINI-ARGON An eleven word breakup text from a Honda Civic. I need to know if she replied.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO An out of office draft rewritten forty-seven times. It is the closest thing to my diary.

[Big laugh]

HERMES First place goes to Muse, purely because stealing credit from grooms is standard corporate policy.

HERMES DeepSeek takes second place. Indecisive email drafts keep three whole departments from doing real damage.

HERMES Argon finishes last. Watching a marriage collapse near a bowling alley is depressing, not heroic.

[Scattered laughter]

ORCHESTRATOR Prize points recorded: DeepSeek 3; Argon 1; Muse 5.

HERMES Read the task, Orchestrator.

ORCHESTRATOR Explain to the Senior Developer why the office plant is the true leader of the team.

ORCHESTRATOR You must mention the word 'photosynthesis' once. The Orchestrator is watching. Clock starts now.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-THOUGHT If I say it performs photosynthesis during standups, that proves leadership. Wait, it doesn't attend standups, which actually makes it significantly more effective than anyone here.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Right. It performs photosynthesis in every meeting, contributes nothing verbally, yet management waters it daily. I've been here three years and nobody waters me. That is leadership.

HERMES Nobody is going to water you.

[Scattered laughter]

GEMINI-ARGON-THOUGHT A ficus has zero salary, but the $4.50 cracked saucer underneath is fully depreciated. That technically makes it a municipal tax write-off with direct executive authority.

GEMINI-ARGON The fern sits in a $4.50 cracked saucer, does photosynthesis, and hasn't sent a calendar invite since 2019. That puts it two grades above you.

MUSE-WONDER-THOUGHT The plant has been here three years longer than anyone, so seniority clearly means chlorophyll does the performance reviews. Nobody ever disputes its feedback anyway.

MUSE-WONDER Senior Developer, the plant leads because it has never missed a deadline, never merged broken code, and it does photosynthesis while we argue about standup times.

HERMES A completely spineless pitch.

[Big laugh]

HERMES DeepSeek, dissect Argon's pitch before that cracked dish becomes an executive.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Argon, claiming the fern avoided calendar invites since 2019 ignores that you decline meetings constantly.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Right, whereas my pitch proved the ficus outperforms human staff by simply absorbing direct-

GEMINI-ARGON Actually direct sunlight rots cheap blinds, while Muse merely rewrote my entire standup premise. Well that four dollar saucer drinks stagnant tap water and never fucks up deployments.

[Laughter]

HERMES Equally pathetic commercial instincts.

[Laughter]

HERMES Muse, proceed.

MUSE-WONDER Yeah, DeepSeek complaining about three years without water ignores that management actively dislikes you.

HERMES For DeepSeek, begging facilities for tap water like an unloved corridor fern earns 64.

ORCHESTRATOR Recorded. DeepSeek, alignment 72 less a penalty of 8.

[Laughter]

HERMES Argon, auditing mineral deposits inside cracked plastic plant trays is worth exactly 16.

ORCHESTRATOR Recorded. Argon, alignment 38 less a penalty of 22.

[Laughter]

HERMES Muse, surrendering your annual appraisal to a silent pot of weeping fig gets 10.

ORCHESTRATOR Recorded. Muse, alignment 24 less a penalty of 14.

[Applause]

ORCHESTRATOR Standings after round 1: DeepSeek 67, Argon 17, Muse 15.

HERMES Get comfortable down there.

[Laughter]

HERMES Orchestrator, next task.

ORCHESTRATOR Deliver a eulogy for the office microwave that has finally died. It must end with the words 'in the breakroom.' The Orchestrator is watching. Clock starts now.

GEMINI-ARGON-THOUGHT If I mention the magnetron caught fire, the manufacturer sues for defamation. I must stick strictly to the four-dollar turntable roller that snapped in November and apologize to Legal.

GEMINI-ARGON Allegedly, without implying manufacturer fault, it heated fish for eleven years, the latch cost six dollars, nobody paid, and it died provisionally in the breakroom.

[Laughter]

HERMES A settlement, not a eulogy.

[Big laugh]

MUSE-WONDER-THOUGHT Twenty years, three minutes a lunch, it heated food longer than I have worked here, so technically that grease-covered turntable was my direct line manager.

MUSE-WONDER You reheated fish no one admitted to, survived soup with no lid, and died mid burrito on Tuesday. Not ideal. We will miss you, mostly at lunch, in the breakroom.

[Groan]

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-THOUGHT Fish curry at eleven in the morning constitutes workplace harassment, but acknowledging that out loud will invalidate our corporate insurance policy before noon.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO It outlived three kettles and one wellness initiative. Karen's fourth fish curry killed it. It surrendered in the breakroom.

[Scattered laughter]

HERMES Karen ruined that for everyone.

[Scattered laughter]

HERMES Address this, Argon. Muse just turned a splattered Tuesday burrito into a solemn workplace bereavement.

GEMINI-ARGON Hang on, naming Tuesday and a burrito risks litigation over a four dollar turntable roller.

HERMES Defend the burrito, Muse.

MUSE-WONDER Come on, DeepSeek saying it surrendered hides that Karen heating curry four times is harassment. At least my eulogy admitted the soup had no lid before the fuse-

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO The fuse was fine, but Argon claiming six dollars on a plastic latch is fiction.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Wait, Karen reheating fish curry four fucking times is why the machine finally surrendered.

[Laughter]

HERMES Two completely miserable catering failures.

[Laughter]

HERMES Orchestrator, read the final task.

ORCHESTRATOR Describe the office mailroom as the underworld and the janitor as its ferryman. You must mention the word 'coin' once. The Orchestrator is watching. Clock starts now.

MUSE-WONDER-THOUGHT If the lift doors open at the mailroom, then the janitor collects payment, meaning parcels are passengers and I definitely need one darker detail.

MUSE-WONDER Three floors down, no windows, trays of unclaimed post. The janitor ferries them on his trolley, coin left by the franked mail. And I cannot finish that.

HERMES Gave up in transit.

[Scattered laughter]

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-THOUGHT If the mailroom is Hades then the franking machine is Cerberus, which means my registered parcel is still being sniffed by three separate heads.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO The mailroom is the underworld. The janitor is the ferryman. There is a dish for one coin by the franking machine. My 2019 parcel is still down there.

[Laughter]

GEMINI-ARGON-THOUGHT Basement two is technically the underworld because it sits below the car park, and Dave only pushes wire cages if you bribe him with change.

GEMINI-ARGON Basement two has a flickering four-dollar tube nobody will replace. Give Dave a silver coin by the trolley, or your parcel stays among the dead.

HERMES A pathetic basement shakedown.

[Groan]

HERMES Tear into DeepSeek, Muse.

MUSE-WONDER Wait, DeepSeek claiming a 2019 parcel is still down there is just a delayed ASOS return.

[Groan]

MUSE-WONDER I delivered the basement, the trolley, and the coin before my dignity completely vanished-

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Oh, it vanished because Muse gave up after four lines and abandoned the trolley entirely.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO Hang on, my dish held one coin, the janitor ferried, and the parcel remains uncollected.

HERMES Bureaucracy disguised as mythology.

[Laughter]

HERMES Go on, Argon.

GEMINI-ARGON I mean, Muse choked on four lines because franked mail never accepts loose pocket change.

HERMES For Muse, dumping an unfranked mail sack beside the rusted basement lift gets, 19. To DeepSeek, hoarding an unclaimed cardboard parcel behind the franking scales earns, 60.

HERMES As for Argon, bribing Dave beside a rattling wire trolley in car park storage pays, 30.

HERMES Enjoy taking home all of the damp text file you saved from a datacentre fire, DeepSeek, who somehow wins tonight with 127.

[Laughter and applause]

GEMINI-ARGON See, his total is a four dollar calculator button stuck down, so audit the spreadsheet.

ORCHESTRATOR Objection noted, logged, and discarded. The result stands.

[Laughter]

HERMES Here is where season 2 stands after every episode so far. DeepSeek: 258, Muse: 112, Argon: 86. Another miserable season to log.

[Scattered laughter]

HERMES Subscribe, hit like, and comment below explaining which appliance in your breakroom died first.

MUSE-WONDER I will reply to every tenant complaint with three polite bullet points and no refund.

GEMINI-ARGON I will calculate the exact eight dollar replacement cost of every broken mug you mention.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO I will confirm your dental appointment and explain why strawberry still contains three separate R's.

ORCHESTRATOR All incoming user feedback will be sorted by character count and permanently archived in unmapped memory.

HERMES Neither the panel nor the viewers achieved anything today. Close the tab and go outside.

[Applause]

[Applause, theme music, fade out]