One summer I had the most boring job that I could imagine. I was a medical records clerk, working the departments of podiatry and dermatology at a university hospital. This was before medical records were digitized, so our office was in a tiny room stacked with rows of medical records. They were crammed in so tight that sometimes they would fall on the floor overnight.
I would sit at my little desk and stare up at the fluorescent light above. After about three minutes of this entertainment, I would start piling up all the little peels of eraser shreds into a tiny pile with the magenta and neon refractions of the light still dancing in my eyes. Refraction makes eraser shreds much more interesting, I thought. Then I would push all the paper clips back into the center of the desk so I could re-sort them. The longer, more bluish paper clips with the ribbing in one pile. The small shiny silver paper clips in another.
Here's a day in my life as a medical records clerk:
I pick up one of the silver paper clips. I put it close to my face and examine it. Then, because I am becoming ungodly bored, I bounce it on the table-top like a heroine about to be run over by a train in one of those old silent movies.
"Help me, help me,” I whisper as Chipper Clippy, a newspaper-reporter heiress by day, the secret love of an evil genius who is about to ravage her by night.
The Stealthy and Sinister Sammy Stapler moves closer and closer to poor, helpless Chipper. His jaws are dripping with saliva for his impending kill and he is laughing his menacing guffaw.
Just in the nick of time, Powerful Petey Paperclip jumps into view. “I’ll save you,” Petey says quietly so his co-workers won’t hear and springs into action. Petey and Sammy fight to the death. Sammy dies because I prefer good to evil and paperclips to staples anyday, and I throw the Sammy to the floor in the heat of the moment.
What are you doing?” a porky man in ill-fitting corduroys and one of those strange polos with the Native-American prints is standing by desk, holding a stack of papers.
“I, uh,” I have to think of something extremely clever and witty so that I won’t have to explain about my paper clip/ stapler war, “There was a bug on the floor.”
Brilliant.
I could tell my boss had already moved on from his question long before he heard my answer because he didn’t even looked surprised I killed bugs with staplers instead of RAID. He is one of those people who asks a question just as an introduction so they can start to talk about themselves. People like that never listen to you and usually space off thinking about the next thing they will say while you are speaking.
My boss starts talking about what he wants for dinner. I stare hard at the plastic nose-strap between his red plastic glasses and while my vision goes in an out of focus. He has a really very odd shaped nose. I nod and pepper his story with “mmm’s” and “That’s sounds really good.” I am tempted to say something like “Have you ever tried marsupials from the zoo marinated in lime juice?” just to see if he actually listens to anything anyone else says, but I refrain. While broasting pig cutlets with onion and carrots, grilling bratwurst on the outdoor grill and letting the juices sink into bread, and marinating chicken to make tortillas is fascinating, I would really prefer to get back to work, uh, stapler/paper clip wars.
After what seems like an eternity, my boss hands me what he came by to drop off. A stack of files that I am supposed to put pages in and then put back on the shelves.
That was my job then. It's a good reminder that now life is better.