Daniel Orozco's Short Story 'Orientation'

Humans or Robots? As Americans, we are told from a young age that in order to have a fulfilling life we must work hard to reach the American Dream. We must get an impressive degree; we must get married by age thirty to someone of the opposite sex; we must have two kids—one boy and one girl; and most importantly we must work a nine-to-five job, writing reports at a desk in a successful corporate business. If one does not fulfil these requirements, others expect that they probably were not up to par, or as deserving, as the other Joe Schmo who did. In Daniel Orozco’s short story, “Orientation,” the narrator is showing a new employee around the office, telling him/her about all of the rules that he/she must follow, about the personal lives of the other employees’, and about the “perks” he/she will have as an employee. By illustrating the corporate workplace as being void of any human element, the story argues that the workplace is an impersonal and a relentlessly
However, after the narrator tells the new employee what he/she must do in the case of an emergency call, the narrator describes the consequences to not following the rules by saying, “If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go” (484). This illustrates the company’s capacity for human emotion (which is obviously extremely low), showing that the company’s value of its rules is more important than any emergency. An emergency is something that comes up unexpectedly and needs to be attended to right away to fix the problem. In this case, the company has no empathy for its employees but rather for the efficiency of the business. The employees are expected to put their job before everything in their lives, even though a job is, in most cases, a source to support the other aspects of their