LONDON, ON—Ken Traynor, a 47-year-old Program Analyst with Gencore Ltd., was excited to learn this week that his company has taken on an intern for the next six months, giving him an excuse to once again perform all the same forced, unfunny jokes he's been telling at the office for the last decade and a half.

Sources confirm that Traynor, whose brutal one-liners long ago ceased to be amusing to any of his coworkers, wasted no time introducing his predictable humour to Brent Carter, 19, who made the mistake of asking Traynor how it was going while riding the elevator on the morning of his first day. Experts agree Carter made a fatal error when he laughed after Traynor replied, "So far so good!"

"People here are so uptight these days. It's nice to have another young, fun guy around," says Traynor, who has a son older than Carter.

The intern, who hopes to graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Marketing, has already twice been told that his computer needs to be "on channel three" to work, and, after being led on an impromptu tour of the breakroom where he was introduced to each individual member of a large group eating lunch, was told by Traynor, "There's gonna be a quiz later!"

"I tried to give him a heads-up," sighs Lydia Carfoote, 38, who has worked on the same floor as Traynor for three years. "But he just said he thinks Ken's a pretty funny guy. Poor son of a bitch has no idea."

Traynor's other longtime coworkers are confident that, while Carter finds Traynor amusing now, he will soon begin to find his relentless attempts at humour unbearably exhausting, and then annoying, and then, ultimately, will end up fantasizing about Traynor's death as a result of a structure fire limited solely to Traynor's cubicle.

As his team at Gencore continues to work feverishly to prepare their quarterly reports, Traynor seems happy for the distraction. "Everyone here is 'work, work, work,'" he told reporters while prying the keys off Carter's keyboard to switch them around. "It's important to goof around once in a while."

At press time, Traynor was excited for Carter to return from his lunch break so that he could send him to the supply room for a "left-handed stapler."