ANOTHER BLONDE/CLUMSY MOMENT

This scenario may be tough to visualize, but Thursday I was transferring last year’s financial files out of my co-worker’s office to make room for this year’s files (fiscal year is April – March). Last year’s files are housed in a filing cabinet across the lobby of our suite. Not a vast distance, but the trip is tedious when you have to carry four (actually 4 1/2 crammed into 4) large file drawer’s worth of files across the room.

I was already tired (after unloading the 2002-03 files into banker boxes to be hauled away along with 10,000 copies of purchase orders) when I got a brilliant beyond brilliant idea. The roommate is always telling me I need to think lazy… meaning finding the easiest way to do something difficult… so I thought I’d found a lazy, convenient way to move the files. From personal experience, I should know that ideas I get when physically tired aren’t always thought out as well as they should be. Keep that in mind.

Ahem… try to picture this. In my co-worker’s office she has a two-tub filing system that hangs in a plastic frame with wheels. I store the alpha numeric cardboard filing systems I use to help with sorting, a pen and that fingertip sticky stuff I use to help me with gripping the papers. That’s it. My co-worker uses the top of the filing system as extra desk space when she’s got one too many files for her desk. I was thinking about how I could make life easier for myself when I spied the two-tub deal in the corner. I thought, “hey, this has wheels!” so I stuffed the tubs full and started to wheel it across the suite.

Who’d have guessed that these plastic things can’t hold that much weight? (ha ha) Five feet from my intended destination, the unit groaned and wobbled, then the brackets snapped in half. The tubs were stuffed so full that when they bounced and tipped over on the floor, not one file or piece of paper fell out.

I cracked up while the lady in the desk behind me tried to keep her laughter to herself. I told her it was okay to laugh… I realized that it was a stupid plan to begin with, but I was so tired, I just had to try it! We laughed, which drew attention from my co-worker’s office and she started laughing when I showed her the pieces of the broken apparatus.

So much for being lazy, right? One of the maintenance guys thinks he can glue it back together and it may hold the 5 pounds of stuff I usually keep in it. He took it away and it hasn’t been returned yet.

Too funny… then the lady who witnessed my clumsy/blonde moment broke her letter opener about an hour later and she couldn’t fix the heavy duty stapler (which someone had put staples that were too big in it), so I didn’t feel so bad…until my co-workers started to call me, “Destructo.”

All further brilliant beyond brilliant ideas I get when physically tired will be filtered through the roommate who is lazier and much more clever than I am… until which time I prove that my ideas are not destructive. Trust me, it’s much safer for office furniture everywhere.