Orientation: And Other Stories

Orientation: And Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Daniel Orozco, published in 2011. Including nine stories, the collection has a loose theme of work and office-related subject matter that Orozco mines for insight into the human condition.

The first story, “Orientation,” takes the form of a new hire’s tour of an office, beginning with the simple declaration that “those are the offices and these are the cubicles.” An unnamed co-worker is giving the tour, and shows the new hire their desk and phone, then instructs them to never answer the phone. The co-worker then tells the new hire that the receptionists quit or are fired quite frequently. The tour goes to the bathrooms, and the co-worker tells the new hire that one of the other employees, John LaFountaine, sometimes goes to the women’s room instead of the men’s room. They then tell a story in which one employee, Anika Bloom, predicted that the wife of another, Barry Hacker, would die.
The co-worker casually mentions that the ghost of Barry Hacker’s pregnant wife is often seen haunting the office. The co-worker mentions the manager, Matthew Payne, and tells the new hire that no one ever sees him. The new hire is then shown their own desk.

In “The Bridge,” a young man gets a job painting bridges and joins a crew of other people. While the other painters are friendly and actively try to forge relationships, the new man isn’t interested and resists these attempts. The crew amuses itself by assigning nicknames to each other, and they attempt to draw the new guy out by allowing him input on his own nickname, but he ignores them, and so they nickname him ‛Baby.’



One day while painting a bridge, Baby witnesses someone committing suicide. The experience affects him profoundly, and he finds he’s lost his previous sense of distance and aloofness. He goes to his co-workers and asks them for a new nickname.

In the story “Hunger Tales,” several stories are told. In the first, an apparently healthy woman, who has a very strict diet and exercise regimen, has a secret habit of going to huge supermarkets and spending hours just watching people as they shop and sampling the free cookies and other snacks that are offered. The cookies make her happier than anything else in her life. Next we meet Hector, an Iraq war veteran who has ballooned to 600 pounds and finds himself trapped in his stinking, filthy apartment. He longs for the normal life he once lived—to feel the sun and wind, to have an intimate touch—but his only escape from his misery is food, which ironically increases his isolation. Finally, a father and son return from the funeral of their wife and mother with a turkey dinner provided by the funeral home. They profess to not be hungry, but begin to eat, and ravenously devour everything, and go on to begin eating every scrap of food in the house.

“I Run Every Day” is the story of a man who observes the obese people around him, especially his co-workers at the office, and resolves to never let himself go like that. He is a dockworker, and his nickname is still New Guy. He has little interest in making friends, and his only true passion is running. Every day he does a little more physical activity, becoming obsessed with it, running and hiking more and more until he’s exhausted. One day a female co-worker tells him that they are alike, and he is enraged that this fat person would compare herself to him. He attacks her, and sexually assaults her.



In “Somoza’s Dream,” an exiled South American dictator, Presidente Anastasio Somoza Debayle, lives the last day of his life. The story follows him as he moves through his day, jumping forward to the moment when a grenade will go off and kill him in a gruesome, violent manner, then jumping back to the dull routine of his life.

“Officers Weep” is a romantic story that depicts the relationship between two police officers in the form of the blotter entries at police headquarters, with the entries becoming increasingly absurd in context, with references to an officer’s erection and other aspects of the growing relationship. The officers are only identified by their shield numbers, adding to the unreality of the story, which ends without any resolution or consummation of the relationship.

In “Only Connect,” a psychopharmacology student named Bennett is mugged and killed by drug addicts named Costas and The Kid. The crime is witnessed by a woman named Hailey, who had gone out in search of ice cream but sees the murder instead. Costas and The Kid decide to let her live, and she is initially convinced that the experience has changed her, but the feeling fades until she makes a connection with one of her clients and flashes back to it.



“Temporary Stories” is the story of Clarissa Snow, a woman who has worked many different jobs as a temp and has failed to find any work that offers her a permanent role. She is hired as a temp to give information about other jobs to people who are being laid off, and finds herself both a part of and separate from her co-workers. Her ride home on the bus is her favorite part of the day because no one is alone on a bus.

In “Shakers,” an earthquake is described in minute detail. A young girl named Neve is picked up by a man on the highway; she is focused on her destination, but he has nefarious intentions. A man drinks beer and marvels at his romantic crush on a news anchor on the television, and wonders how he wound up there. When the ground begins to shake, however, all of their focuses shift to the present, and all of their priorities change.