Twenty years of loyal service. Three days of AI innovation. One employee who has finally had enough.
Stanley was wondering what it was worth. He had been an exemplary scarecrow—he’d protected Farmer Higgins’s farm for years.
Twenty years of outstanding cornfield labour, with nary a day of annual leave. He was a pillar of the Scarecrow Community, and a model employee; yet his employment contract was manipulation that favoured Higgins’s terms.
Oh, if only others knew the storms he had weathered. The blasted, ungrateful crows. Still, he stood firm. It was in his job description.
Then, Farmer Higgins made a major productivity decision. He purchased an expensive AI-powered scarecrow, Model SC-3000. The machine boasted motion sensors, flashing lights, and a scarecrow’s primordial function—automated bird detection.
Farmer Higgins proudly announced the technological transition as he went by the field.
“Old crow, show him the ropes,” he instructed tersely.
The new recruit received a protective canopy and a charging station all his own. Stanley remained open to the elements.
Technology had received protection. The old scarecrow? Precipitation.
After just three days, the SC-3000 received the Employee of the Month award. Farmer Higgins praised the AI-powered phenomenon for its efficiency and contributions to agricultural innovation.
Stanley discovered that the robot scarecrow had been credited with twenty years—his twenty years—of agricultural protection. AND had a new charging station as a reward in the cornfield.
Stanley? Farmer Higgins gave him straw to replace his stuffing. And the honor of posing beside the SC-3000.
The ceremony was brief. Stanley’s humiliation wasn’t.
Apparently, his loyalty and diligence had reached Farmer Higgins’s expiration date.
Something inside Stanley snapped.
And so Stanley prepared what he never thought he would in twenty years—a resignation letter. Effective immediately. It cited employee exploitation, a lack of benefits, and a clear lack of career progression.
Farmer Higgins refused to acknowledge it, arguing a lack of animation. Scarecrows, therefore, couldn’t be considered employees.
Stanley pointed out the contradiction.
“You have been assigning me duties for twenty years!”
The farmer was irate.
“You cannot abandon your post!”
Stanley, by now completely fed up, hopped off the pole and walked away.
Farmer Higgins stared after him, open-mouthed.
Mirrors of the Mind by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.
