COLUMN: Pens and Socks

I try to stay organized to the best of my abilities. Unfortunately by about Wednesday mornings my desk looks like a tornado blew into the office and it takes awhile to get back on track to get ready for the next issue of the Ledger.

I always tell myself that I will be on top of it for next issue, but sadly that never happens. At least I’m consistent from week to week.

The other day Melissa was out of the office in Idaho and I had a rush of customers come through the door. She will deal with a lot of the advertising and circulation matters while I handle the news side of things, but I was wearing both hats last Friday.

A customer came into pay for a subscription and asked to use a pen. I started to look and couldn’t find one near the front counter. I’ve been known for stealing pens around the office, and probably more than occasionally walking out of the bank with them, but wondered if I really lost so many. I thought for a moment it could be kind of like doing laundry and always missing socks. I’m not really sure how it happens and it is one of the more baffling things in life. No matter how many times I do laundry, I always end of with about two or three socks that don’t have a partner. It baffles me every time.

I was finally able to find a couple and realized I had in two days already started to create a pile of mess.

I quickly cleaned up my desk and started to find all sorts of pens. How long some of them had been there I had no idea, but it certainly answered the questions of what happened to all the pens in the office.

I made sure to start to put the pens around the office so this situation won’t happen anytime soon, but I’m sure it probably will. It seems like we buy pens every couple of months and they either get sucked into the black hole on my desk or end up with the socks.

I had to come in and add to this part of the column a few hours later. I found there was a huge box of pens sitting right on the front counter. I now understand how geniuses feel. I was looking for them and they were exactly where they should have been.

Last Friday was also certainly a change of pace because it was a classic example of when one person is out of office it turns into the busiest day of the year.

On Mondays and Tuesdays the phone is always ringing at the office, but it can be very quiet Wednesday through Friday.

This was not the case on Friday. Every time I started to write an article the phone would ring. I looked up and it was 10:30 and I had yet to get any writing done. I wondered why this couldn’t happen the day before, but that would have been too convenient, and sometimes the way it happens.

I was finally able to get some writing done and the customers who came into the office in the afternoon had a variety of pens to choose from. Now if I could just find those socks all would be right with the world.