New Employee Orientation or How I Came to Hate the Name Heather

The meeting for new employees was in the Columbian Room of the Museum of Science and Industry

A sexless conference area that would make the perfect place for a clerk or receptionists suicide

Tapioca walls and a dirty brown floral carpet

There was coffee and it counted as work
so even after staying up all night drinking Evan Williams
and watching a Chapelle’s Show marathon I went

I was the only one from the Omnimax theatre section of the museum
my usual crowd of cynical college kids and single moms and dads that had it tough but still smiled

The crowd for the orientation was comprised almost entirely of members of the facilitators section which meant they were all bad actors and closet-sized theatre directors that needed a day job

There is nothing worse on this planet than being hung-over and stuck in a conference room full of actors

The overflamboyant noise did not mix well with the sterile atmosphere and it made my headache worse

The speakers took turns talking about payroll and fire-exit safety as if the Gods were listening

after four hours of presentations
it was time for the scavenger hunt

we divided up into groups and were all given packets with 25 fill-in-the-blank questions dealing with the museum exhibits

First one back with all the questions answered got a food voucher good for one cafeteria meal

As my group walked by the El exhibit I had visions of throwing myself on the tracks and being run over by a ghost train

Two women led the group

one was a petite blonde very pretty with a gorgeous ass that looked like it never saw the mattress as she slept and was methodically paraffin waxed every morning

she had short hair and ran ahead with the other girl
an obnoxious redhead who you could tell took everything about acting seriously except the talent part and had visions of that room temperature spaghetti already in her head

I suspected the blonde was just feigning interest as an excuse to stay ahead of the rest of the group as she was creeped out (and rightfully so) by the haggard looking Jew with a five o’ clock shadow the quiet fat guy and the effeminate black guy in a lab coat following her

the ladies shouted out the answers and I pretended to write them down
not wanting to be blamed for costing us our cafeteria coupons

When we returned we had lost by a long shot
and as the actors talked I played cell-phone poker

six hours later and we were barely half-way through the presenters

I got up to go to the washroom and when I came back I could hear maniacal laughter and crying as I approached the conference room door

I opened the door
and it was group activity w/ Heather
Heather was the kind of person that assumed talking loud and being overzealous passed as entertainment simply because it worked on people that went to see Indiana rowboat shows and took their kids to the Dells

while everyone was in a circle role-playing I inched over to the table where I hung my head and tried to remain unnoticed

then Heather led the gang back to the table where she pointed at a screen and yelled some more

after a few minutes of Heather’s blonde amphetamine frenzy she asked everyone to get back up and move back into a circle

one kid finally snapped and threw his glasses against the table

three others moaned

this was more than seven hours later
I had had enough

I asked the HR person leading the group and who’d had enough too if I could go I had a train to catch

he instantly knew that I was full of shit smiled and said yes you can

I hiked out of the conference room and up the stairs
Heather being Heather echoing in the distance

on my way to the train stop I saw the same old disheveled and hunch-backed homeless black guy I see on Cornell and 57th everyday

he looked like he wasn’t getting any change

we would both need some hair of the dog that night

© 2008 Lee Kitzis