Office Adventures

I work in an office (although many days it could be more accurately characterized as an orifice of the crimson anal ilk, but I digress). I whirl in today to the dulcet tones of whining (this is not an uncommon experience). Today’s whine involved the copier and how some people (that work under another straw boss) slam the copier lid down, and break it and leave it broken without telling anyone or calling the service folk. This whine occurs approximately weekly. Apparently, it is assumed that only I have the animal cunning to tell someone to stop slamming the fucking copier or I’ll rip your head off and slam it in it and that only I have the animal cunning to call the repair folk. Today’s solution was to place a sign on the machine that says: OUT OF ORDER, SLAMMING THE LID BROKE THE MACHINE, PARTS ARE ON ORDER.
There’s nothing wrong with this machine but it keeps the whiners and the slammers away from it.

Today’s other adventure involved my friend H. I encountered him as we were waiting to accost our mutual boss, me to sign something that requires top secret approval and H. to recount his adventure of the day lest the boss (F) hear it from the news media. People congregate to smoke by a short wall out near the street. H. smokes, he was outside smoking about ten and saw a small open box with a label bearing the name Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner and it contained what appeared to be specimen slides (for a microscope). Rather than leave them on the wall for some one to break or worse, he brought them into the euphemistically titled security guard in the lobby of our building. He gave them the box, the slides and his phone number. He gets upstairs, his phone is ringing and they want him back down in the lobby. In the lobby, he’s greeted by State Troopers, folks in Haz Mat gear, and firefighters who grill him about the slides. These parties were apparently sufficiently concerned that they were ordering up the portable decontamination trucks when through some official channel they learned that the slides were training slides and innocuous. I surely hope so, but I’ve been feeling right itchy since H told me his story.