At work I am clearing out the 2008 files and getting them put away in some semblance of order, and I discover a file named:
Z – Miscellaneous.
.
I open it and find:
Xerox invoices.
.
Of course.
.
I am surprised my predecessor didn’t file everything under S …
.
…. for stupid.
Joy of joys, Joy is back from her vacation and once again manning (womaning?) the reception desk at work. She has a wonderful sense of humor and I love talking to her. She also likes my sense of humor — or at least that’s what she says when she isn’t rolling her eyes.
Today I came from my desk with blood oozing out of my thumb. I said to Joy, “Did you know you aren’t supposed to staple your thumb?” She said she did know that. I walked away grumbling, “Why is it nobody ever tells me these things and lets me find out the hard way?” Joy’s laughter followed me down the hall.
Later, when I was all band-aided and no longer posed a rosy-red threat to the AP checks, I passed Joy’s desk on my way back from the copy machine. Rye was there with her.  I stopped. I looked at Rye and pointed at Joy. “This is Joy,” I said. Then I looked at Joy and pointed at Rye. “This is Yoj,” I said. Rye nodded.
As I walked away I heard Joy say, “Yoj?” And Rye answered, “Uhm. Joy backward. That’s my name when I sit here.”
Joy said — in that tone that questions one’s sanity — “Ooookay.”
I backed up two steps so I could look around the corner and see Joy. “I heard that!” I said. “And I am not silly.”
“So you say,” Joy answered.
I’m still contemplating what she meant by that.
My co-worker asked, “How’s your eye?”
I answered, “Better than my J and my K.”
She shook her head and said, “Oh no. You can’t fool me. I can tell. You are A-O-K!”
We have an amazing printer at work. It does anything and everything a printer-scanner-fax machine can do and it can even do several of those things at once. Today I was scanning documents for the machine to make into a pdf file and send back to my computer. Rye, a new employee, printed a sales document. He retrieved it and we exchanged “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s”.
Moments later I started “building” my second pdf scan and the document feeder jammed. I cleared the jam easily and quickly, and the machine asked if I wanted to abort my job in progress or continue. I asked it to continue. The screen went blank. None of the moving parts on the machine moved. It remained ominously quiet.
I pushed the start key. Nothing happened. I pushed the status key. Nothing happened. I pushed the stop key. Nothing happened. I pushed the abort key. Nothing happened. Well, something happened — one of the phone reps came in and said, “Did my order print?” (But I don’t think that had anything to do with the buttons I was pushing.) I told the phone rep that the machine was acting up and I was going to the Office Manager to tattle. The phone rep said that sounded like an excellent idea, then she tip-toed backward out of the room. Odd don’t you think?
I told the OM that the copy machine was being mean to me. She wanted me to be a bit more specific about its behavior. I told her all the key pushing stuff. She went to the machine and pushed all the same keys. It behaved the same for her as it had for me. She mumbled, “Fine then, be that way,” and she flipped the power switch. Nothing happened. The LCD panel remained lit and all the buttons glowed.
The OM looked quite surprised. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “If this doesn’t work,” she said, “We pull the power cord.” And just then the machine lights went out and the LCD screen went dark. The OM nodded her head, “That threat works every time,” she said.
Rye entered the work room. He said, “I just tried to print something from my desk and a note came up on my computer screen that said the machine was down.”
“I broke it.” I told him.
Rye nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the note said.”
“The note mentioned me by name?” I queried.
“Yes,” Rye answered. “The note said, ‘Be careful of that Charlene person because she is wild and dangerous and she just broke me‘.”
— *** —
Ha! I like him. Rye can stay.
More than once The Boss and I have commented on this guy at work who seems to have no sense of humor. He’s our liason with the sales department and we are both just a little bit wary of him. He’s not really a snarly kind of guy, he just sort of grunts and growls.
Yesterday he growled at The Boss’s boss because he thought we weren’t getting something done quickly enough. Turns out the papers had been completed, they just weren’t signed & delivered. So it was my job this morning to sign all 347 documents and deliver them to Growly’s desk. (The Boss doesn’t come in on Thursdays.)
I got to Growly’s desk with my burden and he greeted me with, “Oh my, gawd. What is that?” I said, “The Financial Work Requests you asked for.”
He said, “That many?” I nodded. He scooted back from his desk, grabbed his coffee cup, and motioned for me to set the stack down. I did. I put it exactly where he indicated. Then I watched in disbelief as his desk top tilted sideways.
His adding machine began to slide, the pencil cup joined it and everything cascaded from there. I jumped back with both my hands pressed to my face and squeeking, “Oh my gosh! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Growly managed to catch the stack of documents. His desk top slammed back into place. The adding machine bounced twice and spewed out a dozen or so inches of tally paper covered in zeros. Pencils, pens and paper clips decorated the carpet like confetti, and dust motes spiraled toward the floor.
A moment of stunned silence passed. People all over the office peeked out of their cubbies to see what had happened. I looked over at Growly with my hands still pressed to my face and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Still hugging the stack of papers, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, took a deep breath – and burst out laughing. He put the papers down on his file cabinet, wiped tears from his eyes, and thanked me. I left the sales department in a bit of a daze, but not so much so that I didn’t notice all the grins directed at me by his co-workers.
