Work Text:
In "All Play and No Work" (S4E5), the episode starts off with Bot getting everyone inside the haunted mansion due to a blizzard. When the guests were irritated at the cold temperature, Bow argues that the Organization of Sensible Careers, ("the OSC") has made the characters "soft" and initiated the competition to scare them to forget the cold. While she did succeed in making the contestants forget, her point about the OSC raises a deeper question about the organization itself, whether in its current state is truly able to meaningfully uplift its people's lives.
We need to understand where this irritability and "softness" of the characters, as Bow describes, comes from. I believe she is right in identifying the OSC as the cause, though she is mistaken in believing that making people fearful would be the solution. She also implies the OSC as it exists is something that's "done to" the people, this is true and in reality it should instead be something the people "does". So why is this the case? Apart from the deeper structural issues of the organization, this wraps back to why the contestants were so irritable at the slightest inconvenience of the cold. I believe the root cause to be the fact that there currently exists little to no education nor workplace training for people in the society.
What happens when the people are illiterate and incompetent is that they aren't able to think critically and simply react emotionally to whatever happens to them in the moment, as well as being unable to reliably and properly complete their assigned duties. This is evident as seen with the kitchen staff in the first episode of the season, fumbling around unable to service the newcomers and now the contestants' irritability. And so, such a society cannot function properly when the ordinary person doesn't know what they're doing. What we see instead is most of the actual work being done is by members within the OSC itself, from Suitcase's security to Test Tube's scientific advancements. The government is then alienated from the people, it was supposedly going to be all well and good having eliminated Cobs, that the power would now belong to the people. While power is technically in the hands of the characters, it is not so different from Hotel OJ and the II2 competition, just slightly more benevolent, making competition optional and management being controlled by an intelligentsia rather than just a single host.
Then it follows that the OSC should have an educational and training program for its people. There does exist something of that sort run by Cabby at the library shown in the first episode, but I do not believe it is at all sufficient. The play shows the history of the society's founding and it can be assumed there exists other textbooks on different subjects, but they are all optional, no one has to pick up a book if they don't want to. Rather, there should be a mandatory educational program, equivalent to elementary and middle school education, that teaches the most essential skills for people to understand and take part in society, such as reading comprehension and writing, or arithmetic and algebra, the social and natural sciences. Additionally, new workers should be accompanied with a training program suited to the respective workplaces, like operating kitchen equipment or acting techniques. This allows the worker to do the actual required tasks specific to their job.
Now, having this education system does not mean it must necessarily mirror exactly the educational system in real life, in fact the conditions of the society actually allows for a lot of changes that'd otherwise be impossible or very difficult to do in our current society in real life. Even though they are bound to materialism (i.e. you cannot create or destroy energy/matter, only change its form; stuff like the picnix table cannot exist, death is permanent), they are not bounded by whims of a capitalist economy's drive for profit over human well-being. This means, generally speaking, allows life to move at a slower pace which can drastically improve both the mental and physical health of the people. A person may only have a daily schedule with a full 8 hours of sleep, then 6, 4 or just 3 hours of work and 3 hours of education, allowing much more time for developing their personal hobbies and interests. From basic education, people can choose to pursue higher levels of education, perhaps it could even be integrated into work time, putting the knowledge to practice rather than staying purely theoretical.
Education would also create a sort of "social norm" where people are expected and have the skills to cooperate and be kind to others, problem-solve and think critically, rather than people just thinking for themselves, acting selfishly or reacting based on emotion without logic. Of course, this does not mean we punish anyone who deviates through fear and coercion, all people should be treated with understanding and compassion why they're different and may that difference be appreciated as well to have created a vibrant and diverse culture. This social norm can be imagined as being radically different from what we're used to in our society.
And them's the facts! I hope it can be seen how naively scaring people won't do anything to make them act responsibly nor do their jobs well in the long term. Rather, giving people the basic skills to at least function as a member of society and from there grow and develop themselves through work experience, this would realistically let them complete their tasks properly and not whine at the slightest inconvenience.