History Main / AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker

** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E12TheRoyale "The Royale"]] an alien race had created a simulation of the Royale hotel from a potboiler book of the same name in order to bring comfort to a human astronaut which they had accidentally stranded on their world, having accidentally destroyed his ship and killed the rest of his crew. However, even after the astronaut died (hundreds of years ago) the simulation continues.

* One episode of ''Series/DoctorWho'' featured a group of maintenance robots who had been programmed to keep the ship running at all costs. They followed these orders so well that they [[spoiler: dismembered all of the ship's ''crew members'' and used their various body parts to supplement the ship's systems when they ran out of conventional parts. That's right, they [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters destroyed their programmers]] in the course of following their programming.]]
-->'''Doctor:''' It was just doing what it was programmed to. Repairing the ship any way it can, with whatever it could find. No one told it [[spoiler: the crew weren't on the menu.]] What did you say the flight deck smelt of?
* On the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "A Tragedy of Telepaths", Londo and G'Kar discover [[spoiler:that G'Kar's former aide Na'Toth had been imprisoned and forgotten for the last two years in a Centauri dungeon, since nobody ever countermanded the late Cartagia's orders putting her there]]. Londo explained that that sort of thing happens with an absolute monarchy, and related a story of a guard detail that was continuously posted at a spot in the Centauri palace gardens, on orders from an emperor 200 years ago to guard a special flower there that had long since perished.

* On the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "A Tragedy of Telepaths", Prime Minister Londo and G'Kar discover that G'Kar's former aide Na'Toth had been imprisoned and forgotten for the last two years in a Centauri dungeon, since nobody ever countermanded the late Cartagia's orders putting her there. Londo explained that that sort of thing happens with an absolute monarchy, and related a story of a guard detail that was continuously posted at a spot in the Centauri palace gardens, on orders from an emperor 200 years ago to guard a special flower there that had long since perished.

** BURN-E, a repair droid, gets his own short film taking place during the film where he tries in vain to repair a light WALL-E accidentally damaged. WALL-E ends up continuing to intentionally sabotage his efforts, until BURN-E ''finally'' fixes the light... only to faint when a second later it is broken again.

* One Creator/ShelSiverstein poem has a disobedient student be told stand in the corner of the classroom as punishment. When class ends, though, the teacher forgets to tell him he can stop, and he keeps standing there in an attempt to prove he's good. By the end of the poem, the school has closed, the building is abandoned, and he's an old man still waiting there.

* Some fanatical Japanese soldiers continued to "fight" UsefulNotes/WorldWarII on secluded islands in the Pacific after the war had come to an end, with at least one holding out for decades in the jungle, dismissing all calls for surrender from authorities as enemy propaganda.

* WesternAnimation/WallE keeps trying to clean up Earth's surface after all humans have left even though he is the only robot still functioning and no real progress has been made in several hundred years.

* The Animunculi (dwarven/Dwemer magical robots) of TheElderScrollsVSkyrim still attempt to perform their duties, even as Dwemer ruins crumble around them. Their masters disappearing hundreds, if not thousands of years before, but they [[RagnarokProofing built things to last.]]

* The Animunculi (dawrven magical robots) of TheElderScrollsVSkyrim still attempt to perform their duties, even as the dwaven ruins crumble around them and despite their masters disappearing hundreds, if not thousands of years before.

* In the Creator/IsaacAsimov short story "Risk" a robot pilot is to test a hyperspace drive and is given instructions to "pull the stick back firmly - ''firmly''" until the drive engages. The drive doesn't engage, so the robot is stuck in that position and its human operators have to try to get it to stop but it just won't stop pulling because the drive hasn't engaged.

* Played for laughs in ''[[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Droids]]'', which tells an anecdote where a binary load-lifter, a barely sentient droid that amounts to a forklift with legs, continued to stack boxes on a section of floor despite increasing signs that it was about to give way. After it collapsed onto the floor below, the load lifter just got back up and went to get more boxes.
** In another book, a droid can be seen replacing street lights in the deep lower levels of Coruscant. The droid had been performing this task for so long that even the replacement bulbs were burnt out, leaving it to continue an endless cycle of bulb changes.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "Southern Fried Rabbit", WesternAnimation/BugsBunny encounters Yosemite Sam as a Confederate soldier guarding the Mason-Dixon line 80-odd years after the end of the AmericanCivilWar. When informed of this fact, Sam replies, "I ain't no clockwatcher!"

See also BotheringByTheBook and TheDeterminator.

* From {{WesternAnimation/The Legend Of Korra}}, there is the always stoic Zhu Li, Varrick's personal assistant. Not only does she constantly put up with her {{Cloudcuckoolander}} employer's crazy demands, [[spoiler: she even goes to jail with him]].

* The ''WebVideo/FriendshipIsWitchcraft'' episode "The Perfect Swarm" has a running gag with one particular pony watering a single flowerbed for hours on end. Even as a disaster is destroying Ponyville around her. Several episodes (and eight in-universe months) later, "Foaly Matripony" reveals that this pony is ''still'' watering those same flowers.

* Somewhat parodied in ''Series/{{Blackadder}} II'' when Edmund replaces his faithful manservant with [[SweetOnPollyOliver another.]]
-->'''Edmund:''' Well, Bob, welcome on board. Sorry Baldrick, any reason why you are still here?
-->'''Baldrick:''' Euh .. I've got nowhere to go, my lord.
-->'''Edmund:''' O surely you will be allowed to starve to death in one of the royal parks.
-->'''Baldrick:''' I've been in your service since I was two and a half, my lord.
-->'''Edmund:''' Well that is the why I am so utterly sick of the sight of you.
-->'''Baldrick:''' Couldn't I just stay here and do the same job but for no wages?
-->'''Edmund:''' Well, you know where you will have to live.
-->'''Baldrick:''' In the gutter.
-->'''Edmund:''' Yes. And you'll have to work a bit harder too.
-->'''Baldrick:''' Of course, my lord.
-->'''Edmund:''' All right. Go and get Bob's stuff in and chuck your filthy muck out into the street.
-->'''Baldrick:''' God bless you, sweet master!

-->'''Ford''': Delay? Have you seen the world outside this ship? It's a wasteland, it's a desert. Civilization's been and gone. It's over. There are no lemon soaked paper napkins on the way from anywhere.\\

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Simpson and Delilah", Homer uses a hair grower to get his hair back and is promoted and gets an assistant who then takes the blame for something Homer did, gets fired, and still writes Homer's speech for him even after having been fired. The assistant is absurdly faithful to Homer.

* {{Golem}}s on the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''. If not attended, they will continue carrying out their last order indefinitely, potentially causing huge property damage. Other characters have mused that this is their approach to protest.

A machine or creature is programmed to perform specific kinds of duties, but at some point of time something happens to it's environment that makes continuing to perform the task pointless. The machine, ever faithful, keeps doing it anyway since it was never told to stop. Often, this is a result of AfterTheEnd or at least all humans leaving the place and forgetting the machine.

It can also happen to a person if this person is somehow traumatized and has becomes a stoic being with no sense of it's surroundings.

* At the end of an ECComics story a man's Robot Wife keeps protecting him long after he's dead and his flesh has rotted away.

* A famous human example is Creator/CharlieChaplin in ''Film/ModernTimes'' where he goes berserk working on an assembly line tightening bolts in an ever accelerating conveyor belt. He eventually gets caught inside the machinery (where even there he's busy tightening bolts), and after he gets rescued he continues going through the motions, tweaking noses and buttons with wrenches on both hands.
* In ''Film/SkyCaptainAndTheWorldOfTomorrow'', Dr. Totenkopf's machines carry on his work of assembling a "Noah's Ark"-type rocket and loading animals on it despite him having died 20 years prior.

--> '''Edmund:''' Well, Bob, welcome on board. Sorry Baldrick, any reason why you are still here?
--> '''Baldrick:''' Euh .. I've got nowhere to go, my lord.
--> '''Edmund:''' O surely you will be allowed to starve to death in one of the royal parks.
--> '''Baldrick:''' I've been in your service since I was two and a half, my lord.
--> '''Edmund:''' Well that is the why I am so utterly sick of the sight of you.
--> '''Baldrick:''' Couldn't I just stay here and do the same job but for no wages?
--> '''Edmund:''' Well, you know where you will have to live.
--> '''Baldrick:''' In the gutter.
--> '''Edmund:''' Yes. And you'll have to work a bit harder too.
--> '''Baldrick:''' Of course, my lord.
--> '''Edmund:''' All right. Go and get Bob's stuff in and chuck your filthy muck out into the street.
--> '''Baldrick:''' God bless you, sweet master!

* Many robots in the ''Videogame/{{Fallout}}'' universe are unaware of the nuclear war that devastated America in 2077, and are still trying to carry out the tasks assigned to them in the Pre-War years.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "Southern Fried Rabbit", WesternAnimation/BugsBunny encounters Yosemite Sam as a Confederate soldier guarding the Mason-Dixon line eighty odd years after the end of the AmericanCivilWar. When informed of this fact, Sam replies "I ain't no clockwatcher!"

* In the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "Southern Fried Rabbit", BugsBunny encounters Yosemite Sam as a Confederate soldier guarding the Mason-Dixon line eighty odd years after the end of the AmericanCivilWar. When informed of this fact, Sam replies "I ain't no clockwatcher!"

* Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''Film/TheBlackHole'' has a disturbing example. The creepy cloaked and mute robots on the Cygnus continue to water and care for the hydroponics bay (itself alive and almost overgrown) despite the entire crew abandoning ship leaving Dr. Reinhardt all alone. That they continue to care for it when all it does is feed one man and filter out his [=CO2=] is seen as suspicious by the crew of the Pallomino. It's revealed that [[spoiler: they former crew have been subject to UnwillingRoboticisation and the bay is used to feed them as well.]] The tragedy of this is brought to a head when the Cygnus is being pummeled by asteroids and none of the cloaked robots react to preserve their lives at all, and instead continue manning their posts. It's made poetically ironic when Dr. Reinhardt is trapped by a collapsing beam and begs for help, only to be ignored by the cloaked robots.