It�s an anagram of PEDIATRIC. I had a lot of time to do anagrams yesterday. I also finally finished, and then graded myself on, the Entertainment Weekly Ultimate Pop Culture Quiz � or something like that, I left the magazine at home today � and I got an 87. Things I don�t know anything about include the Planet of the Apes movies, the Jackson Five, "L.A. Law," and "Dynasty." Lucky guesses included Fig Newtons for the multiple-choice question about Magnum P.I.�s snack food of choice and, in a wild coincidence, Tom Selleck for the original first choice to play Indiana Jones; I guess those cookies had put me in a Selleck frame of mind. I think I got every question that required even glancing reference to a country-music knowledge base (I�m talking Patsy and Willie, not Garth). I don�t know why the match-the-ventriloquist-to-the-dummy exercise was worth a whopping five bonus points, but whatever, I�m taking it. 87. Can you Cure kids beat that? I didn�t think so.

I will never again say or write "a Selleck frame of mind." Promise. In related news, I was reading an article over the weekend on some band or other that contained the phrase "tempestuous vibe" and I closed the paper immediately as if I had had enough in some deep philosophical way. Later I felt really good about this, I felt like I�d successfully held an important line.

So you will be wondering how my orientation was yesterday and in general I�d rather not dwell on it in detail � it was possibly the most demeaning full-day experience of my adult life, it was one long insult and a hundred thousand paper cuts to my integrity, it was boring and not relevant to me and a complete waste of my time and the make-your-own sandwich tray for lunch could have been prison food. The people were mostly the grown-up cool girls from high school, still in preening cool-high-school-girl mode, and a few cross-eyed misfits bound for the file room. There were videos about teamwork and motivation and the importance of a positive attitude � watching which sort of thing, as you know, only motivates any self-respecting adult with a brain to fantasies that involve action, solo, with a gun and an attitude perhaps better described as negative. There was lots and lots of what was supposed to be participation. Imagine Holly Hunter�s chubby-faced, self-satisfied, Oprah-emulating, condescending older sister with the worst and brassiest highlights you�ve ever seen in your life, and that was the facilitator. (She would later sit down at my table during lunch and start yammering for no reason at all about her boyfriend, in a way that suggested it mattered to her that all present knew they�d had sex on Friday night.) Imagine a cool science chick I might have been friends with in college, and that was, well, the HR assistant in charge of working the projector and clicking from one PowerPoint slide to the next as Holly�s sister encouraged us all to adopt her great attitude and can-do spirit as a model. It was so depressing that the day-after memory of it is giving me one hell of a bummer � and I haven�t even gotten to the bad parts yet! Here�s the one thing: They told us that internet usage is strictly monitored and that once a month, our managers will get a list of all the sites we have visited and if any of them are not defensibly work-related there will be (a) consequences (b) up to and including getting fired. Also that because working in such an institution as this one is a wondrous privilege as well as a heavy responsibility, we must all check our personal lives at the door when we come in each morning, we must put aside everything else we are thinking about in the service of our jobs � so no personal phone calls ever (phone usage is monitored too), no use of e-mail to do something like make dinner plans, no making a shopping list or dwelling on home and family issues. If there is an emergency and we really must make a phone call, Holly�s sister suggested, we should wait for our breaks then take our cell phones and walk off campus. Which, in a practical sense, is bullshit. What if I don�t have a cell phone? What if I have to call the garage and see when my car will be ready and they take the same lunch hour I do? What if I had a kid and it was sick and I had to figure out a child-care Plan B? Yesterday afternoon before I could see this practical side so clearly, I had to pull my car off the road and make two hysterical phone calls � yes, from the cell phone � and let myself get calmed down from the horror of realizing that I was actually in a position where people were within their rights to talk to me like that, do you know what I mean? This morning Melissa pointed out that if anyone ever busted me for my surfing habit, the whole office including one of the doctors would or at least should go down with me (I don�t know whether this is germane or I�m just playing devil�s advocate, but I�m sure she has no idea exactly how much surfing we�re talking about here) and that she has never heard of someone getting busted anyway. She told me about someone in this office � and wouldn�t you know, it�s the nurse who hates me � who calls her mother, long-distance, every day, and she said if anyone was keeping an eye on the phone records then surely this would raise an alert. She also noted that almost none of us need internet access for the successful fulfillment of our job duties and that if they were serious about trying to enforce this work-only mind control on us, they would get rid of DSL and make people apply for dialup privileges on a case-by-case basis. Good points but I don�t know. I do know that there have been all kinds of punitive new rules put into place over the last few months, and new managers hired with a mandate to root out poor cooperators � which seems to be those who don�t start frothing at the mouth when someone mentions teamwork. I do know that someone, somewhere out there, is making ad hoc decisions as to what sites hospital employees are allowed to visit, a level of scrutiny I would have doubted was in play until I saw evidence of it.

In a way, though, the possibility that the only way I can make it through a day on the job is what will get me fired from it is not as bad as � this is along the same lines as my this-is-how-it-is realization above � working in a place where the HR party line is the one about the necessity of being 100% focused on work at all times. And it doesn�t even matter whether HR believes it or not, I mean whether all those threats are just to scare us: there�s a little part of me, and a good part, that rises up in revolt at the very thought: it doesn�t even matter whether I can do it or not (I can�t), but the suggestion that I should � or else that I should lie and say I have � is toxic to my personal dignity. When someone says to you that a paycheck is a tradeoff for mentally shutting out your family and friends and interests and concerns and plans and everything for about half of your waking hours of every day, the appropriate response is not defeated and silent compliance, like mine was yesterday. I feel like if I had any pride I would have gotten out of my seat, gathered my paperwork and my briefcase and my jacket, and walked out of there without an explanation, maybe come up to Gastro long enough to get my illegal personal files off the PC and then walked off to the parking lot without looking back. I�ll slack all day long when there�s no work to do and write diary entries on the job and sneak in late, but I have a real fucking problem pretending that I�ve entered into this agreement to become a drone and that I have no problem with it, I cheerily accept. Nobody talks to me like that. Nobody gets to imply that myself is a thing with a pause button and that it�s in the being paused that things of value can get done, and no amount of slack time is worth what going along with that would cause me. This is what I said to my sister when she picked up the phone yesterday afternoon: "I don�t think I can work at the hospital."

I�m going to send mail to the temp pimp tonight and explain things and say let�s-talk-tomorrow about what my prospects would be if I stayed on board with her. I�ll also send mail to the other agency, the one that hooked me up with the Arson gig, because one-plus calendar year after getting that one my hours are reset to zero and I could get something long-term again. I won�t do anything rash and hasty, though. I�ll talk to the doctors here � who adore me and I�m guessing will find the news of some concern � and tell them that after the orientation day I�m having deep deep reservations about working at the hospital, and to the Wife of Bath, sometime this week, I will put things less gravely. Maybe they�ll reassure me. Maybe not. But one thing�s for sure, the current state of affairs with the HR spin on it is flat-out unacceptable.

Crazy world, ain�t it? Vanessa swears that all of this is just a phase and that contrary to current evidence my life is not, after all, everlasting crap. I want very much to believe her. What will make me believe her?