It was time for Dabblez to make a tough decision.
Six months ago marketing had come up with a new concept; a personal fitness trainer robot. It would be the ultimate executive toy. There was nothing on the market even remotely similar to it and RUR’s QPT robots could easily adapted for this new role.
Sure, it would be more of a gimmicky product rather than cutting-edge science, but as RUR’s successful leet-bot range showed, the company needed some cash cows to fund the more serious research.
She’d approved the project and the RUR engineers had got to work. The robot was dubbed the Physical Fitness Family Trainer or ‘Pfft!’ by the boys in marketing (you got to love them) and it’s was due to hit the shops in early summer, just as the wives of OT-executives normally began to worry about how they would look in this seasons bikinis.
But the project hit a few problems and it end date had slipped. To make matter worse, a new threat loomed. Bazzit Jnr, a neutral engineer and industrialist, was currently engaged in a takeover bid for RUR. With 27% of the shares, he would just need another 24% to gain control the company. Thus far most RUR shareholders had stood firm and refused to sell to him, but Dabblez knew she had to deliver something soon to keep control of the company. And that thing was the Pfft!.
And therein lay the dilemma. Should she postpone the Pfft!’s launch till her engineers were all 100% happy with the robot, but risk loosing RUR to Bazzit in the meantime or should she be bold and launch the new robot now while they still had a chance to save the company? After all how ironic would it be to hold back on the Pfft! now only to see Bazzit benefit from it in six months time?
Once again Dabblez reflected that being her own boss was not all it was cracked up to be. Then, despite a strong feeling of foreboding, she signed the authorisation letters.
