My head elf was busy at his desk when I entered with a hearty, “Morning Bernard. Ready for our pre-Christmas check-in on all the workshops?”
“I sure am,” he answered with a grin. “I finished looking over the reports and made a record of the things we need to check.”
I examined the list and nodded. “With only a month left until Christmas, we need to make sure production keeps up. Grab your coat and let’s get going.”
Before we even made it out the door, Pete and Repete, my elves in charge of quality control, burst into the office, their faces as pale as fresh snow.
“Santa, Bernard! We’ve got a major problem,” they panted. “It’s the new automated production line—it’s jammed!”
“You mean the Turbo-Tinsel 3000?” Bernard wanted to know.
“Yes!” Repete shouted. “You know how Pete checks the systems, and then I examine them again to really be sure everything is in order? Well, the second time, the system started to jam.”
I looked at Bernard. “We just installed this and tested it for months. It was producing toys at twice the speed of our old toy line. How could anything be wrong with it so soon?”
“We know, Santa. But now every lever is jammed, and every cog is stuck tight. The conveyor belt carrying freshly painted toy trains has stalled. Then the other one kept spitting out teddy bears creating a mountain of them at the end of the line. We had to shut it down.”
“Worse still,” Repete interrupted. “The control panel is flashing with more colors than lights on a Christmas tree. The screen showed a single blinking message: “ERROR: OVERLOAD—TOO MUCH CHEER”.
“Well, this is a holly-jolly mess, isn’t it?” I said, scratching my beard.
Bernard quickly called Fixens, the elf in charge of maintenance, and Quinten, the elf in charge of Research and Development, and told them to meet us at the Turbo-Tinsel 3000 immediately. “Let’s go, there’s no time to waste.”
Once everyone was at the 3000, Bernard yelled, “Everyone, let’s try to correct these lines! Quinten, run diagnostics. Fixens, check the power supply. Everyone else, see if there is something broken or jammed in the system.”
About an hour later, Quinten found the issue. “I think the new software doesn’t just measure our toy output—it somehow measures ‘holiday cheer’ levels,” he explained. “And… well…. if you can believe it, we are exceeding the cheer limit.”
“What?!” I asked. “Exceeded it? How is that even possible?”
Bernard nodded. “We’ve been so focused on getting everything perfect, the elves’ cheer levels went through the roof. The machine must be reading it as an overload.”
The elves all exchanged looks. Had they really been too cheerful?
I began reviewing everything that had been happening since the Turbo-Tinsel had been installed and let out a loud “Ah-ha!”
Everyone stared at me.
“Remember, when we thought that mischievous Gremlin, Malodor, was in the workshops?”
“Yeah, but we could never find him. His scent of dirt with hint of Sulphur eventually disappeared like he hadn’t even been here,” Fixens said wringing his hands.
“And we didn’t find anything he messed with….” Bernard suddenly stopped. He looked at me and grinned, “Until now!”
“That’s right. Malodor must have come in and added something to the Turbo-Tinsel 3000’s programming so that our cheerfulness would be punished by stopping production,” I informed everyone.
“That is so Malodor.” Quinten smacked the machine. “If he isn’t happy, he doesn’t think anyone else should be.”
“That’s the opposite of how it works,” Bernard said as he shook his head. “We all know that when you see someone who is not happy, you try to cheer them up and make them happy again. You never try to get someone who is happy to be unhappy.”
“That’s right. But what are we going to do about the system?” I demanded.
“No problem, Santa. Give me about twenty minutes to remove the instructions that the Gremlin added. Then the Turbo-Tinsel 3000 will be up and running again,” Quinten explained.
Within the hour, the toys began to roll off the line. I could feel Elfin cheer rise even higher than when it shut down the 3000. “Tonight, after dinner,” I announced, “we celebrate with some of Judy’s special hot chocolate and Doheny’s cookies. Christmas has been saved.”
Notes From Santa
I hope you enjoyed today’s story. Stories are posted on the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month, except December. Santa’s next story will be posted on Saturday January 4, 2025. If you have any comments or if there is something you would like me to tell you about, please feel free to leave me a comment. Until the next time . . .
To read other adventures of Malodor please check out:
Sleigh Problems – January 4, 2021
Cookie Problems – December 1, 2021
False Alarm – July 15, 2022
Heads Up – October 7, 2023
Santa’s Lost Key – October 5, 2024
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