Kids These Days; or Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Her chair not yet cold, the grief counselor still on-call, Fi, dear Fi, AKA “Female Intern”, has been replaced.

With yet another intern.

Having been promoted from her position as Female Intern – to be an intern no more but to be a real, live employee and therefore permitted the return of her real, live name of “Kara"  – and having moved to the perfumed, lotus-strewn halls of the top-most floor, her chair has gone intern-free for almost two months.

I often sat in it and wept silently.

And now, the Corporate Gods, in their cruelty, have deemed the humble double-wide cubicle currently housing my hopes, dreams, and stapler to be the First Stop on the newly graduated’s road to capitalist success.

I am surrounded by newbies.

Naturally, I am against this.

  

I eye the new Fi with suspicion.  Freshly post-college and just, seemingly, past puberty, her flip-flops are strewn on the floor, her jar of peanut butter visible in the open cupboard above her desk, her iPhone buzzing across her desk with impunity.

We have nothing in common.

She must be punished.

“Kara,” I type, “the new Fi is impertinent and, I suspect, entirely clueless.”

The response is immediate.

Ping!  “:-),” she says.

My fingers fly:  “How shall I kill her?”

“Stapler?”

“Copy machine accident?”

“Recycled-paper landslide?”

“Three-hole punch.”

“Oooh,” she writes.  “Three-hole punch.  How old school.  I like it.  It says ‘I’m here nine to five and I’m not afraid to collate’.”

“That’s me,” I write.  “Old school.”

“Hmm,” she writes.  “Yes.”

There is a pause.

Ping!  “Hey!” she writes.  “Guess what I’m doing?”

I grin, forgetting about my cube mate, who is texting furiously, her little cheetah thumbs ablaze.  “What?”

“At this very moment, I am shoveling cheese popcorn in my mouth as if the world will end in 25 minutes.”

“I miss you so much.”

“I have typed this whole exchange with my left hand because the right one is too greasy.”

“You’re just saying that.”

I grin at my monitor, certain that, one floor up, Kara is grinning as well – and then glance over my shoulder in time to see that the new Female Intern, the new “Fi”, having finished texting, is grinning into her iPhone.

Perhaps there is common ground here after all.