Stapler massacre

Eve stopped by my office…

How many of my posts begin this way, or at least contain the sentence, I wonder. Quite a lot, I’m sure. It’s usually where fun in the workday begins.

So, Eve stopped by my office to ask for help. There is someone who comes to her when he needs assistance with anything--usually unrelated to her job. Today he wanted to know how to perform the equivalent of aerial acrobatics in Word. Excel is Eve’s bag, so she came to me, asking if it was possible to accomplish what he wanted. “I already told him no,” she said flatly but with a sparkle in her eye that meant she was still going to try to help.

There were two things he could not do, no matter what kind of devilish deal he tried to make with Microsoft. I began to explain how to do one thing. She sat down to take notes. There’s nothing amusing about any of this, yet within a minute she had her head in her hands, laughing so hard there was no longer sound with it, and I was practically in an airline prepare-to-crash position, laughing the same way. We cannot get through anything without this happening. It’s almost like we go into an improv state of mind. No matter what non-sequitur is tossed out, you run with it.

A couple of hours later, I was in the copy room duplicating handouts that Henry wants for a meeting tomorrow. (I have a rule against people using me as their personal assistant, but Henry is an exception.) I was using the electric stapler to slam through a 36-page document. Turns out, that’s about the limit the stapler can handle.

A staple released but the paper stuck. Since paper still covered the sensor, the stapler continued slamming staples. There’s not much in the room to absorb noise so sounds double in intensity. It sounded like a tommy-gun massacre was occuring.

I couldn’t yank the paper free. I couldn’t stop the staples from coming. Finally, I pulled the cord out of the wall, realizing too late it was the cord was to a powerstrip, which had a printer (in use) plugged into it. Oops. I shook and pulled and yanked at the paper but couldn't release it. I finally a button on the stapler that freed it.

There was only one person who was going to appreciate this. I walked into Eve’s office and broke into laughter. She joined in, not knowing why. In short bursts, I said, “The electric stapler stuck.” And I handed her the document that had a quarter inch of metal piled in the upper left corner.

“Damn. That’ll hold.”

That leveled me.