new hire orientation

[psocoptera]

Why did we need to see a slideshow of buildings on all three campuses? Ooh, and here's people in the dental school cleaning teeth! Why do I need to see that? Why did the HR person feel the need to inform us, in tones of shock and horror, that whitehouse.com is a *porn* site? Oooooooh, pooooooorn. Everybody made wide-eyed faces and shook their heads. Am I the only new hire who likes porn? Am I the only new hire who is ready to bang her head on the table listening to all this useless information that we could LOOK UP FOR OURSELVES in the fucking 60-page handbook, or one of the three or four auxiliary handbooks including the one called @WORK about the Five Tufts Competencies (summary: do a good job at your job)? For godsakes, I could be checking two-hybrid plates! ::Beats head on table::

It's impossible to really think with the perky droning of HR going on, so when I do manage to try to get my mind elsewhere it's all coming out as bad free verse. As in:

When Harry finally gets around to telling them about Voldemort,
his red eyes and high-pitched voice,
Hermione has them over during the hols and shows them Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
After that Harry is never so scared again, at least not
of the way he looks.
And Hermione
thinks for the first time of a universal solvent for magic
and since that's all that's holding Voldemort together
when Harry pulls out the super soaker from under his cloak
and blasts him
he falls apart into a sodden lump of bone and flesh
soaked in Harry's blood.
She never admits to Snape where she got the idea.

Only Ron takes away nothing, too entranced by the dancing pictures
to follow the plot.

Comments

[rhoddlet.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, lovely characterization. It's nice to see the ficlet start out about the three of them, then turn into a punch about Ron. <3

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Is it a punch about Ron? I mean, I like Ron, and I like Ron here; for Harry and Hermione everything is about Voldemort and the war, but here's Ron who can still recognize that he's seeing this wonderful new thing. On the other hand, he has lost the plot ::grin::.

And thanks so much for your nice comments; clearly being driven out of my skull with boredom and annoyance is a good thing for my literary side... ::grin::

[rhoddlet.livejournal.com]

I have become completely unable to frame a coherent sentence in my old age. Punch = literary punch. Like, the story starts with the three of them, and so the final turn on Ron is quite a punch to the stomach. But in a good way.

*weeps*