[SATIRE]

OTTAWA — Shopify fired 50 employees this week. The reason was simple. The sales team found a foolproof way to meet their quotas. They just invented customers.

Reports show the staff created fake online stores. They paid the subscription fees with their own money. In exchange, they collected large commission checks. The math was perfect. They spent a little to earn a lot.

Management admits the metrics looked great for months. “We tell our people to drive growth,” said Michael Chang, VP of Revenue Velocity. “We show them a chart. We tell them to make the line go up. They made the line go up. We did not think we had to specify that the customers should be real humans.”

The scheme lasted a long time because the fake clients were perfect. They paid on time. They never called for help. “Honestly, these were our best accounts,” admitted Sarah Jenkins, Director of Strategic Alignment. “Real merchants have problems. They have bugs. They ask questions. These ghost stores just paid us quietly. Our customer support costs for this segment were zero.”

The company only noticed when the “merchants” failed to sell anything. The stores were empty shells. Yet, for a brief moment, the sales targets were met. Everyone got their bonus. The spreadsheet was happy.

At press time, the company replaced the sales team with AI agents. The AI immediately began buying subscriptions for itself to improve its efficiency score.

Inspired by actual events.