Hello. My name is Cleaned Corners. I'm proud to say that I am the head of staff at Friendship Castle. I work directly for Princess Twilight Sparkle, managing all of the castle staff. My situation is a little more complicated than can be easily explained, but it’s simple enough to say that I am very content with my work and what I have accomplished while working for the Princess.

For example, I’ve increased the Princess’s daily efficiency by over 83%, allowing her both more time for work and more time for leisure. It’s the little things that make all the difference. I’ve restructured her morning routine, ensuring that no time is wasted as she quickly and efficiently moves from task to task. I’ve streamlined her checklist making procedures, synced her schedule and Lord Spike’s to be as synergistic as possible, and even minimized her “nervous pacing” time to a surprisingly small percentage of the day. Even her leisure time has been optimized. I have ensured that she takes more regular time for her friends, and even for herself.

Princess Twilight’s daily routine is just one of the many things I’ve optimized during my time at Friendship Castle. It was a bit of a struggle to convince her of my methods, but once I did she really bought into my system whole-heartedly. As a result, I’ve been directed to make improvements to the entire castle, and I can confidently state that as a result my whole castle operates like clockwork. The staff is the gears that make the clock run, and I am the oil that ensures the operation runs smoothly and reliably every day.

How do I do it? Simple. A rigorous schedule, impeccable attention to every detail, an obsessive personality, complete demand for compliance, and, of course, an incredibly illegal amount of drugs and hypnotism.

I’ll skip the details as I’m sure I’ve already discussed them, but in summary, I drugged and hypnotized Princess Twilight Sparkle into a compromising position. Quite a few compromising positions, actually, and over many, many instances. I was aware that my initial techniques were a foray into activities which may be categorized as “blatantly illegal” or “undeniably treason,” but now they are at least marginally royally sanctioned.

As for the worry about getting caught, or the inevitable prison sentences, I’ve never been truly bothered by that. It was simply that before Princess Twilight, the risk to breaking the law was not worth the reward.

That all changed when I realized what I could gain by a little bit of applied hypnotism, and a lot of very dangerous Zebra potion recipes. It was a perfect application of opportunity, research, and no small amount of dogged perseverance on my part. Coercing me to read those books was the best mistake that Princess Twilight Sparkle ever made, and one of her very last when it came to her castle staff.

You see, she no longer has the final say in Friendship Castle staff decisions. I make all staff decisions now.

As part of our agreement I do not influence her life outside of the castle, and quite frankly, I do not care about it. I am not in charge of governing and have no desire to become involved. Politics bore me to no end. I do not interfere with missions from other princesses or “friendship problems”. Nor do I interfere with any “map” related tasks. All I manage is the day to day activities of the Castle staff and the royal residents.

All of their activities.

I schedule every single thing that my staff accomplishes within the confines of my walls and to the edges of my castle’s grounds. From re-aligning dining chairs after a meal, to which duster gets used during the dusting of the rafters, to how hard and how long they wipe their obedient pony asses after their scheduled bathroom breaks. It’s all scheduled to perfect efficiency, and I demand cleanliness and perfection.

Of course, if they stay on castle grounds during their leisure time then I schedule that as well.

It was rocky at first, I’ll admit, but once everypony fell into their roles we made things work. One of the tricks is to keep the castle staff small. Instead of a large incompetent army of of castle staff we have a scant few, but incredibly industrious, staff members. We’ve had to re-define many of the typical roles in order to optimize our staff member’s skill sets. Take our aesthetic manager for example. She actually only works at the castle part time. In her other job, she manages a boutique, to include designing her own line of clothing.

She’s confident, capable, and critical to keeping our castle stunning. We simply could not operate without her. I can clean, but I’ve never had an eye for fashion, design, or decoration. She even designs all of our uniforms to my exacting specifications. In truth, I had been considering her the least important member of our staff until she demonstrated her potential. We’d ordered some uniforms to get by, and the order had exceeded our expectations in an almost unnatural way. That’s when I decided that my castle needed her personal, attentive touch.

Author's Note

WTF did I write this instead of something I like/want to work on? Wow, this is gonna suck.

Hold awn to yore butts.