the office

no, silly, not the t.v. show. i mean MY office...the one that i live in for a third of every revolution around the sun. or, eight hours a day. so naturally i have plenty of thoughts and blogfodder (is that a word?) about this place of employment. due to my contract, i can't mention my employer or my coworkers by name, so i guess i just have to talk about other things.

well, the inspiration for this post, which was going to be entitled "paper clips," was the experience of running dangerously low on paper clips this morning. okay. i like paper clips. and i mean the new, shiny, smooth perfectly shaped ones, and not the old tarnished ones that smudge your papers and make everything scratchy. i also don't mean the ones with little grooves on them that tear up your paper.

the paper clips here come in little boxes, which i never knew, because when would anyone actually buy paper clips in real life? paper clips have always existed, and will always exist. they are like matter, which cannot be created or destroyed. at my house, we never gave a second thought to where they came from, or how they got into the bottom of the "organizer" in every drawer, haphazardly covered with more frequently needed household items. i never remember purchasing paper clips; we just took them for granted. because only a fool would buy what is always there.

so imagine my surprise when, as a newly minted state employee, i first had to go down to Accounting to pick up some more paper clips. i probably said something like "aren't those just in the bottom of the drawer here?" and not only are they ALL shiny and perfectly straight; they come in -- glory of glories -- a little box. now you have to understand that i really like boxes, especially little ones. it's mostly because i like things to be organized, and sometimes i wish i had more little things so i could get some little boxes to keep them in. (the other reason has a long scientific name that i can't remember now.) it's a great experience, now, to cut the paperclipbox so that it has no lid, allowing me to easily access those beautiful paper clips whenever the state of nebraska should require such a task.

oh yes. today i ran low on paper clips. it had begun to irritate me that in the little lidless box were not only paper clips of a uniform size and shape, but a variety of clipping tools in a variety of sizes and shapes. this could not be. so i made the short trip to Accounting to replenish. i kind of like going to Accounting, and not just because that's where i pick up my pay stub every two weeks. i like it because they are amazingly, frighteningly organized down there. except for the women themselves and the occasional plant or other desk ornament, everything in the room could neatly fit into a large grid, if you could superimpose a grid over your glasses or something, and look through it. everything is on a perfect horizontal shelf, perfectly arranged in vertical stacks, themselves perfectly spaced from other stacks. it's how i would imagine being in a computer, if that experience were possible, only more colorful.

and i am sorry to be so anticlimactic once again (i know, i was just building to something) but i usually can't get endings right, which always makes me want to write about endings to have some kind of closure, and to help obscure the fact that i can't write endings or at least distract you enough to make you forget. i don't think it's working today. so i guess that's where today's story ends. sorry, i was going to write more about my office but the paper clip part got too long and no one is probably still reading anyways.