My trimester 2 writing class activity had us craft a 150 word short creative piece on the spot, based on a supplied ornamental quote. This is the larger version of the one I put in:

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

George Carlin

The floor was a cold linoleum-clad slab of concrete. It burned her bare feet; the chill echoed up her skin into the cores of her knees. Though her bed looked invitingly warm next to her, the cheap glass desk demanded the completion of her new horizon: a stack of application papers. But it was hard to focus in the cramped room, no larger than a prison cell. She couldn’t move around without her legs bumping into her desk, the corner of her bed, a shelf, her tiny kitchenette, or the dead panel heater she’d had to prop up on its side to keep from scalding the lino.

When the clock hit 1500 hours, she took her pile of papers and stamped them flat against the glass surface. Her desk rocked forward as she stood, and she shuffled past the end of her bed to exit her living quarters. She took off down the hall in quite the excited hurry, stopping her stride only when she reached the gold-laced door. A label, “Executive of Planetary Affairs” was engraved into a tasteless platinum plate. She knocked on the door.

“Come in!” the executive announced. A hop in her step, she carefully placed the pile of documents onto his desk. “So you’ve finished? Great.”

The executive’s chair rotated to the left — blatantly ignoring her documents. She remained still, smoothing her blouse as she waited for any other acknowledgement, or even a dismissal, while he fiddled at his computer.

Finally, he raised his nose. “You’ve more?”

A frown touched her brow. “You… asked me to complete these applications for the open position…?”

“Oh. It’s already filled.”

She blinked. “Ser?”

“We filled it. I appreciate the time and effort you took to do all this, but it was handled an hour ago.”

“Oh.”

“If that’s all?”

Her eyes turned glassy while she stood there, unsure what to do with her hands. Her feet took control and led her out of the executive’s office. But the disappointment of reality had frozen her journey back to her living quarters.

A shuffle of papers to her right drew her attention. There sat a human woman at the desk, empty just yesterday, wearing a pair of shoes that covered her feet., She was being warmed by a perfectly functioning panel heater.