What you need to know about your new office.
(from Best American Short Stories, 1995)
Those are the offices and these are the cubicles. That’s my cubicle there, and this is your cubicle. This is your phone. Never answer your phone.
It is what it sounds like, the get-acquainted first-day-of-work speech. After it takes you through the copies and the coffee, it moves to the soap operatics and then into darker territory. Still, even as it moves into the absurd and impossible — always in that bored, tour-guidey human resources cadence — it’s never an unrecognizeable fantasy. And it’s always funny.
Here‘s where you can read the story. It’s not long and it’s a fun read.
I just assigned this story to my Intro. to Lit class and I’m going to have them comment on your post as part of an assignment. Have you ever read any of the “Self Help” stories by Lori Moore? They’re also in 2nd person and have that same dark, dry tone.