Senior Employee Retention Specialist

This article is from a DEFUNCT version of Heliox Stardust, and is NON-CANON!

You're happy where you are, got it? Someone needs to pick up our trash, remember that you have a valuable role in our shuhih. Should you forget, I'll show you just how much worse your life could be.

— A SERS

A Senior Employee Retention Specialist, or SERS for short, is an essential component of Vulin society. These are an elite few who are tasked with ensuring that particularly troublesome citizens accept their assigned careers, and don't try to escape their lot in life by fleeing the planet, or committing suicide. Due to the often dangerous nature of this work, all SERSs are dusters.

Forced Promotion

SERSs are employed by VR (Vulin Resources), who have access to the government database of Vulin dusters. If a particular duster is not already in a high position elsewhere, or already employed by the government via military service or otherwise, they will find a golden message in their inbox.

//---x.00121_em---//
//---NEW MESSAGE RECEIVED---//
//---SUBJECT: REASSIGNMENT---//
//---SENDER: VR---//
//---Accessing...---//
//---We know what you are. Your talents are needed elsewhere, vuhsik. You are being promoted to SERS, you begin work tomorrow.
Don't be late.---//

Recruits must begin their new work immediately, or find themselves hunted by another SERS within a week. Given their strength, it is imperative that rogue dusters are apprehended with haste— after the necessary paperwork has been filed, of course.
On the job, SERSs are assigned ten rogue citizens— referred to as ihuah— to track down and apprehend at a time, though there is no strict time limit on these cases— it is generally expected that at least one is closed per week. Ihuah come from every walk of life, and go rogue for an equally varied number of reasons.
One may resent a reassigned position, another may despise a coworker, many aspire for something greater and attempt to climb the corporate ladder on their own— each has their own history and reasoning. In the end, one cannot make it within Vulin society without adhering to their assigned positions— and so, many ihuah end up homeless or taken advantage of by employers who wish to cut costs on wages.

Operations

Pity, however, is not in the job description for a SERS. All a SERS is meant to do is locate ihuah, and get them back into the workforce as soon as possible. Death is not ideal, as every hand can work— and each loss is a loss of productivity. Maiming, however— is not off the table. Even a paraplegic can be of use, forced to run through virtual simulations that test new products or methods of control. Or, for those who continue to be uncooperative— their brains can be utilized as part of a great computational engine. SERSs are not directly involved with the final fates of uncooperative ihuah, however, while they may maim and cripple them in order to apprehend them— they do not get to decide their new assignments.

Believe me, returning to work is in your best interest

— A sympathetic SERS

Example jobs

The sewer guard

A SERS is assigned a new target, an ihuah who was recently reassigned from a robotics specialist to a sewer cleaner. Angered by this sudden change, the ihuah utilizes their prior knowledge to reform sewage cleaning bots into killing machines, and goes into hiding.
The SERS spends a week tracking them down, eventually finding them hiding inside one of their stolen bots— which they end up fighting, breaking the ihuah's back as a great hammer of dust breaks the bot's outer casing. After being brought in by the SERS, the ihuah is deemed too dangerous to leave alone, and is assigned to a virtual focus group— left strapped into virtual reality to determine the eligibility of various advertisements, taglines, and jingles.

The artist

A SERS is tasked with tracking down an ihuah who aspired to be something greater than a trash collector— a self-proclaimed artist. In pursuit of their dreams, the ihuah had taken to graffiti, tagging various public spaces with great, colorful murals depicting the emotions and struggles many Vulin face on a day-to-day basis.
These were, of course, quickly removed— yet each was just as quickly replaced with another, elsewhere. The SERS eventually found them living beneath a bridge, and began by talking to the ihuah, attempting to convince them to return to their work and give up their dreams. The ihuah refused, and had their main arm promptly broken. They have since abandoned their dreams, and work obediently.