Welcome to your first day at Target. We’re really excited to have you here and we want to make your first day as easy as possible. Questions about paperwork can be answered by HR. Questions about inventory can be answered by the floor manager. And questions about customer service issues, moral dilemmas, or concepts only knowable through a priori, extra-human experience can be directed toward the red concrete orbs out front.
The safety video is a little bit dated but it is mandatory, as is the sexual harassment module and quiz. Once you finish those, feel free to grab a free water from the break room and step outside for a moment to seek total enlightenment from the red orbs, which possess within them the entirety of wisdom contained in the known universe.
We send out the work schedule for the following week on Thursday but if you forget, it’s always posted in the break room. If you have any questions about the schedule or if you hope to delve into the collective unconscious and derive answers to life’s many questions from ancestral memory, the red orbs are happy to assist (happy isn’t the right word, the orbs are not subject to human emotions).
Don’t ask where the orbs came from or what they are made out of. They simply are, and have always been.
Before I worked here I used to think that maybe the big red orbs out front were there to keep cars from driving into the store but I always wondered why that was only a problem at Target. Walmart or Sears didn’t seem to have to take these vehicular precautions. It wasn’t until I worked the returns counter the first time, had a customer question, went out front, placed my hand upon the orb, and saw into the realm beyond our own where I was surrounded by both nothing and everything at once. That was the first time I experienced the voice which seemed to come from within my body, but was not my own. The voice told me that, though we were outside of the 30-day return window, it was appropriate to still offer store credit to the customer returning an unopened coffee maker.
At the same moment, I was shown the outerversal, platonic ideal of customer satisfaction. It is a bit hard to describe as it transcended our reality and contained colors not perceivable by our human eyes but, needless to say, I understood the importance of good customer service.
When (not if) you find yourself having to make the decision as to whether a customer lives or dies, corporate policy requires you to check with the orbs. Even if you are confident in the answer, legal requires the orbs to weigh in. What is the point of omnipotent orbs if we don’t use them?
New employees often wonder, “will drinking from the fountain of knowledge inherent within the orbs cut into my legally mandated break time? I fear I may become so wholly consumed by the infinite reaches of knowledge contained within the orbs that I will accidentally stay for longer than my allotted fifteen-minute break and will accidentally commit time theft while in pursuit of illumination.” Fear not, the orbs operate on a plane outside of time and space. This means, when you communicate with the orbs, linear time does not move. You can question the orbs for hours and when you return to our realm it will be as if no time has passed. That being said, please keep it to work questions while on the clock.
Some of your fellow employees might tell you that the giant red orbs are really just cement blocks on which you project your own ideals of right and wrong. They tell you the mysteriousness surrounding the orbs merely provides a placebo effect that makes you believe there is an aura of great sagacity but that, actually, the wisdom is coming from within you. That’s fine, they are free to believe that, just give the name of the person who says that to your manager and prepare to donate to the GoFundMe we will set up for their loved ones.
Please, take full advantage of the orbs and their infallible, limitless knowledge. Learn from them. Better understand the world around you and human existence as a whole. Obviously, we want you to use them to improve your job performance, but we also want you to use them to improve yourself. And, most importantly, abide by their every order on matters pertaining to store unionization and whether to vote for candidates that support an increased minimum wage.