Death by Stapler

You should be glad you don’t work in the same office I do. Today, you’d have a very unpleasant Lefty around to make your life miserable.

First, I’m sick. It isn’t the steaming fever, raging sore throat and exploding sinuses (to steal a line from Dave Barry, the Exploding Sinuses would be a great name for a rock band) sort of cold. It is the slight drip, dripping runny nose that reminds me of a leaky sink, the “Dad, can I? can I? can I? CAN I, huh, please?” sort of sore throat that is more irritating than painful, and enough of a fever to make me weak and weary. So that’s got me pissed.

And then, did I mention, there is a secretary that works here?

Each week, on the very same day every single bloody week, she is to go to a particular drawer in another office and pick up two forms that were filled out the previous afternoon. She is to then fax the forms and put the originals in a file.

You’d think it would be a simple task, right? You would be totally WRONG. It is more complicated than assembling the entire Earth using only a box of matchsticks and a piece of gum. About every other week, the secretary comes in to tell me that one or more of the reports is not in the drawer where it is supposed to be. What she really means is that the form was not RIGHT ON TOP with a Sherpa guide nearby to help her locate the form.

It is true, that for some unexplained reason--probably ghosts or mice with superpowers--the people who fill out the forms do not always put them in the right drawer. Sometimes one form is in the correct drawer and one is not, and sometimes neither form is in the right drawer. But always--ALWAYS, damn it!--if the “missing” form is not in the correct drawer, it is in a drawer precisely adjacent to the correct drawer. That means there are a maximum of three additional drawers in which to search for the form.

“But,” says the secretary, “I can’t go ALL OVER THE PLACE looking for the form.”

It gets better, though, because this week she couldn’t find one of the forms. So, like the idiot I am, I went in to look for it. I opened the drawer. On top was the empty clipboard that holds the form she had already collected. I lifted up the clipboard. And there, like the Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was the blessed form. She DIDN’T EVEN LOOK!

Now on to part two.

Our office answering machine had a message from an employee at another location stating that she needed certain supplies. When that happens, the secretary purchases the supplies, and I take them to the other location because I am over that way quite often. Did I mention that the employee said she urgently needed the supplies?

After a couple of days had passed and there were no supplies for me to deliver, I said to my secretary, “Please let me know when you have bought the supplies so I can take them over.”

“You didn’t tell me to buy them.”

Somebody else was in the office, so I didn’t say what was really on my mind, which was “Waaaaaaaaagh!” as I plunged a stapler into her heart.

I also wanted to say, “And I didn’t tell you to breathe, but you managed that. And I didn’t tell you to pick up your paycheck, but you did that. And I certainly didn’t tell you to leave the office early last Friday but still put on your time card that you worked a full shift, but you sure as hell did that.”

Instead, I said nothing, and several arteries in my brain disintegrated.

So be glad you don’t work here. I might just kill you with a stapler.