3/31/08 - Secretarial Woes

When you're a church secretary you never know what you're going to encounter when you walk into your office on Monday morning.  There have been many days when I wished I had taken a camera to work, just so I could show somebody the mess left behind on my desk.  It's not uncommon to find sermon tapes, a phone book, money envelopes, the phone turned around, a set of keys, a library book, an earring, and somebody's glasses lying in the middle of my blotter for me to sort through for the first five minutes before I can even sit down and drink my Tall Nonfat Raspberry Mocha check messages.  That's not to say that some of those things aren't legitimate items that should be left on my desk.  It's just not my favorite thing to face directly on a Monday morning.  I would just as soon find at least the phone book put away, the telephone put back where it belongs, and the library book in, say, the library.

With all that said, today was a typical Monday morning with plenty of paraphernalia to greet me.  And then came the ultimate woe.  I must say that something has been frustrating me for days, if not a week, but it was just sitting in the back of my mind, not really surfacing.  I don't even think I realized there was a problem, until it got serious today.  I mean, nitty-gritty serious.  I've been unable to easily grab paperclips out of my little magnetic dispenser.  I have to tip it, shake it, tip it again...until a paper clip is finally released and drops out.  It was one of those nagging things that I couldn't quite put my finger on until today.  I needed a paperclip to...ya know...clip some papers, and all the shaking and tipping and smacking the dispenser against the desk would not release a paperclip.  I popped the top off to investigate further, and look at what I found.

Someone had taken over 60 paperclips and linked them together, some even double- or triple-linked.  My first thought was How precious!  Yeah. Right.  It was more along the lines of Alright, people!  Don't mess with me!  My second thought was, I am sooooo blogging about this!!!  And then proceeded to unhook every stinkin' paperclip for the next 10 minutes.

Now who would've done such a thing?