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Things with the job have been okay lately — sometimes really good — and people are telling you how happy they are that you’re there. Admittedly, though, this is one of those low moments of the job that you don’t want the people you meet at Christmas parties to know you do. You’ve constructed a 26 page report for some high-level people (think three levels above your manager) and sent it to the copy room to make 15 copies. Only, you get there to discover that you’ve inexplicably inserted a blank page in the document that’s not supposed to be there, following just after Page One.
You consider editing it and reprinting, but reject that in favor of ever-so-carefully pulling the offending page out of each of the 15 packets, thus messing up the pagination, which you don’t think anybody really reads at 6pt type anyway. You spend the next half-hour pulling the pages out, wondering if anybody saw the mistake in the email you sent last night and whether it would have been just as easy have had the document reprinted. You get to the end of the pile and notice the little shards of paper littering your desk, left over from the corner of the ripped-out pages. You wonder about the rest of those shards still tucked away up underneath the staples of those packets and how they might look on the expensive conference room table at this afternoon’s meeting.
Remembering the snub nose pliers on the Leatherman in your pocket, you let out a sigh and begin to carefully pry apart the quarter-inch of paper above and to the left of the staple. You’re not sure if it’s low blood-sugar, caffeine jitters, or just plain nerves that causes your hands to vibrate at the Concert A frequency of 440 Hz, but another 15 minutes go by before you’re finished and you can look for some other, more meaningful task to justify your employ.
