"You must pace your work. What do I mean? I’m glad you asked that. We pace our work according to the eight-hour workday. If you have twelve hours of work in your in-box, for example, you must compress that work into the eight-hour day. If you have one hour of work in your in-box, you must expand that work to fill the eight- hour day. That was a good question. Feel free to ask questions. Ask too many questions, however, and you may be let go."
This brief paragraph says a lot about how the story is being told. The narrator of this is obviously one who is a recently hired employee at an office location. It is in first person point of view, however, not a single time in this paragraph, or even in the entirety of the story does the employee speak a single word. This is the closest to the narrator speaking that we have. the speaker says "You must pace your work. What do I mean? I’m glad you asked that." This shows that either the narrator spoke and we did not hear it, or the speaker is inferring a question.
This also says a lot about the speaker. This person has not only been with the company to familiarize himself/herself enough to give the orientation, but they are overly confident and passive-aggressive. The narrator remains silent, yet the entirety of the orientation seems threatening. For example, "Feel free to ask questions. Ask too many questions, however, and you may be let go." This is obviously off-putting, but in many instances the speaker mentions being let go for different yet simple instances. The speaker has obviously given office tours and rules many times as the entire speech seems like a rapid robotic spiel with absence of emotion.
In my personal opinion, this is not a company I would like to work for, then again, I also never want an office job. While the task loads may not be hard on many occasions, i just don't feel comfortable with the unclear boundaries. Isn't it juxtaposing to say you can ask questions, but not too much? I'd feel uncomfortable asking questions all together with not knowing where my lines are drawn.
Works Cited:
https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2011/05/17/orientation-by-daniel-orozco/
Hi April,
ReplyDeleteI am right there with you in that this is a job I would hate to have. Although this is obviously an extreme version of what office life is like, I think it is some really good social commentary on what it really is to work in an office. This kind of job scares me and I am glad that I never got sucked into that life, because I think I would waste away and die in that kind of setting. I found it almost comical how robotic the speaker sounded in this story, especially when he begins taking about the secret lives of the different employees. Anyways, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Hi April,
ReplyDeleteI found this to be a satirical take on the workings of an office. There are so many “politics” to corporate life that it’s almost comical. You can always find someone in the office who knows every small “ism” about all of their colleagues, and definitely embellish from time to time. This author was great at making it into something comical.