A good portion of my day is spent sorting invoices for billing and filing. It’s not complicated work by any means, but the monotony of the thing really just makes me sleepy. I’m not sure when, exactly, I started playing little mind games with myself to make this task a bit more enjoyable, but at some point I started a word game. As I sort the invoices I look at the first letter of the company (or customer) name and use it to add another word to a sentence.
So it might look a little something like this*:
(C)hoctaw Inc.
(H)elium Concepts
(A)rgrew Mfg.
(U)nderwood Design
(A)bel’s Welding
(T)he Steel Shop
(E)agle Realty
(A)dvanced Mechanical……
those first letters might turn into the sentence “Children Have An Uncanny Ability To Eat Anything.” Maybe I’m explaining this simple little thing with too much detail, but you get the idea. Sometimes the invoices are in such an order that they actually spell simple words. “SHY”, “TAPE”, “AHA” are all examples of such words. No real magic there.
But…today…as I was sorting, I got this message:
(G)eneral Builders
(E)agle Realty
(T)illey Testing
(O)klahoma Machine
(U)nderwood Design
(T)urner Mfg.
…and as I was trying to make a sentence out of the letters, it suddenly dawned on me that they spelled “GET OUT!” My mouth fell open, my palms got sweaty and I felt prickles of premonition up and down my spine. I stood up from my chair contemplating whether or not to run out the front door screaming like a banshee, but I figured it might be hard to explain to my boss that the invoices had given me a mysterious message, so I sat back down and looked back through the stack to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. No mistakes, the message was “GET OUT!”
Now, I’m not really a superstitious person, but this was just creepy. I’ve never told anyone in the office about the “game” so there’s no way that someone could have been pulling a prank on me. What does it mean? Clearly it means “GET OUT!” Maybe it means I really do need to get a new job. Could be that I should start looking for a new place to live. Or…maybe the message is just the beginning. Maybe tomorrow it will continue with “…YOUR CREDIT CARD AND HELP FEED THE STARVING ARTISTS IN MOZAMBIQUE!”
~~~
I got flowers at work today. Since there’s no man in my life I first assumed that maybe the F-tard bought flowers to apologize for emotionally destroying me yesterday. That was quite an unpleasant assumption, and was absolutely incorrect. On closer inspection I realized my bosses bought them! Then, I was embarrassed to think they were sympathy flowers for all the crybaby waterworks I’ve been demonstrating in the office for the past month or so. I went to the Sales Manager and asked if they were pity flowers for the poor, pitiful, dumped office manager. Although he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, he assured me that they were not pity flowers. It seems that today is Administrative Professionals Day.
I’m certainly an Administrative something but lately I’m sure I’ve been anything but professional. Now I sort of feel guilty for all the whining I’ve been doing about how much I want a new job.
* All customer names fictionalized, mostly to keep them from accidentally stumbling upon my blog via a search engine and deciding that they should reconsider using my company in the future. Besides, if they all quit buying from us, they might mess up the messages! 
