Life without a soul

Hour after hour, day after day, Bobby O'Toole '06 sits silently on a couch in the common room of his quad in Little Hall and stares blankly out the window.

In the mornings, his roommates bustle in and out, grabbing their textbooks and rushing off to class. O'Toole was once a straight-A student in the ORFE department with insatiable intellectual curiosity, but now he doesn't go to class.

In the afternoons, other students frolic outside the window, chatting about the latest gossip or throwing a football in the snow. O'Toole once thrived on interpersonal interactions, but now he rarely speaks.

In the evenings, his roommates join him on the couch, laughing gleefully as they watch DVDs of "Family Guy" or "Chapelle's Show." O'Toole once had an infectious personality and a strong leadership presence, but now he doesn't even smile — he doesn't remember how.

For five weeks, O'Toole has been in this state, unable to laugh, unable to cry. He lives in a world without feeling or emotion, without pleasure or pain. It's been this way ever since he signed that contract — oh, that cursed contract — on what was supposed to be the happiest day of his life.

Five weeks ago, O'Toole sold his soul.

On Dec. 7, O'Toole signed a $65,000-per-year contract to join McBainCG, the world's leading financial management strategy consulting firm. He hasn't been the same since.

O'Toole declined an interview with the 'Prince' — saying only, "I look forward to leveraging my core competencies, identifying potential synergies and adding value to clients" — but friends and family members paint a picture of a young man, once lively and vibrant, stripped of all life and vigor.

"We were really pumped when Bobby signed his contract, so we drank a bunch of booze," Allen Hamilton '06, a roommate, said. "But by the time the ink was dried, the emotion had completely drained from his face. He stopped smiling and started starring blankly into space — it was kind of creepy."

Hamilton added that O'Toole used to be long-winded and talkative, but that he now only uses brief PowerPoint presentations and flowcharts to communicate.

Another roommate, Oliver Wyman '06, said that when O'Toole does talk, he quietly mutters meaningless words to himself, often repeating the phrase "construct a framework."

"He did perk up this one time when I figured out a new way to chug a beer," Wyman said. "I think he said something like, 'That's a best practice; we should benchmark it.' I had no clue what that shit meant, so I just kept drinking."

O'Toole's sudden change in work-life balance has pained his longtime girlfriend, Muffy Goodhead '06, even more.

"Lately, whenever Bobby and I try to perform a merger and acquisition, he's had trouble leveraging his competency as forcefully as he used to — he just sort of lies there and hedges his position, if you know what I mean," Goodhead said. "I'm trying to get him to ask his doctor about performing strategic due-diligence, but he's too embarrassed to talk about it."

And then there are O'Toole's parents, once so proud of their Phi Beta Kappa son, who can only wonder and worry from afar.

"I still don't understand what this 'consulting' business is," said Kathy O'Toole, Bobby's mother. "But I told Bobby that picking a career just because some company took him out in a stretch Hummer limo and got him drunk was a very bad idea."

"I guess the signing bonus is nice," said Stuart O'Toole, Bobby's father. "But I still think he should have become a doctor."

This article is a part of The Daily Princetonian's annual joke issue. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.