Meet the newcomers to the dream team:
Brandon Oxendine / At first glance Brandon appears to be the most colorful member of the bunch, with clothes and hair a prismatic riot. Look a bit longer, however, and you’ll see that he has the calm, quiet eyes of a forest doe. These eyes reveal an inner calm so deep that you’ll wonder if he ever has actual thoughts at all. Is he even awake, or has he fallen asleep with his eyes open? No, I just saw him blink, he must be awake. Can he hear us talking about him? How can he not, he’s only three feet away. Now he’s turned back to his computer and is singing quietly to himself, doing nothing with his hands. Just staring at Facebook.
Chloe Gilstrap / One of the calmest people you’ll ever meet, Chloe does whatever is needed to keep the office purring. Odd, though, that a person whose job description includes ‘answering the phone’ should have hearing worse than most octogenarians. Mangling names and messages horribly beyond recognition, Chloe is a one-person game of Telephone, with hilarious results. Maybe it’s because her deafness makes us laugh that we keep her around. We laugh even harder when she blames her poor hearing on the rest of the world’s mumbling. Oh Chloe, stop, you’ll kill us.
Haley Shaw / Haley physically and metaphorically hums as she works. It starts low, sub-sonic, and builds so slowly that for a long time you question whether you’re hearing something or are experiencing early symptoms of tinnitus. By the time you know it’s not in your head she’s fully engaged, head whipping around, eyes nearly closed, humming at about 100 decibels. If you don’t slap her out of it at this stage it’ll be too late. She’s soon out of her chair, spinning like a top in the middle of the room as the high keening reaches the pitch and volume of a jet engine. The office clears and you watch her through the window with everyone else, wondering when it will end. Eventually, after about half an hour she sinks to the floor, unconscious and finally silent. You rush back in and take your seat, and when she awakens she knows nothing. It’ll happen again in a few days.
For real now: Fuzzco.com/office
