The Secret Lives of Office Supplies
The fluorescent lights turn off, the chatter of the water cooler dies off, but not long after, the chatter of the office is revived by a new set of workers.
Mandy Manila Folder gossips about Polly Post-it with Marty Manila Folder. Unfortunately, Polly is attached to Pamela Paper within Matilda Manila Folder, and she hears everything they say.
Similar small talk is made by all the other office supplies, with the exception of Holly Highlighter. All the other writing utensils think she’s far too bright for her own good. Holly sits alone, and a little bit of Neon Pink ink stains the desk beneath her, because – you see – how else can a highlighter cry?
But that’s all irrelevant, because the gossip of Mandy and Marty Manila folder and the sad story of Holly Highlighter are merely footnotes in the story of Preston Production Company. The real story is that of Peter Paperclip.
Peter, you see, was madly in love with Stella Stapler – the most beautiful of all the office supplies. He had admired her from a distance for years, but his love was a hopeless one. Because when an office worker needs to staple something, he doesn’t need a paperclip. Peter was so bent out of shape with his love for Stella that he was no longer usable for his paper clipping function and was instead used to reset the office clocks.
Peter was nothing special, aside from his newly disfigured form. He was from an off-brand box, but he tried hard. He had never lost a paper in all his years of work. Unfortunately, the office clocks wouldn’t need to be reset again for another several months, so Peter would be thrown away when Marty, the cluttered cubicle worker, returned to work the next day.
You see, no one at Preston valued their office supplies, because they believed that the supplies were endless and expendable. When Frederick Fax Machine broke, he was replaced by a new machine that didn’t even really work. When Pamela Paper and her sisters couldn’t hold any more ink – another family of Paper was bought up. None of the supplies ever really got to know the Computers, because after Carl Computer was replaced in 2000 a new guy came in and left every other month.
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Fluorescent lights turn on, and Marty Miller dragged himself out of bed, for only one reason. Eve Evans.
Marty was a man. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing special. He punched the clock at 9 am. And left work at 5 pm. Or at least that’s what it would say on his time sheet. He really left at 4:45 pm, but he didn’t want anyone to know. He didn’t like his job, or his co-workers, but he wasn’t too fond of his empty apartment either – so it was a bit of a moot point.
Marty, you see, had only one thing really keeping him going – and that was Eve.
Eve was the receptionist at Preston Production Company. She drove a Corvette to work every day. She was a receptionist who drove a Corvette – so Marty knew she unavailable, at least to him. His boss, Marty was sure, didn’t have the same problem.
Despite this, Marty was desperately in love with Eve. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, Marty was in love with the soft brunette curls that framed Eve’s face, the perfectly portioned hourglass shape of her body, and her legs which he had seen when she went to her Corvette at 4:45 every day to leave work.
Marty had never spoken to Eve, but, needless to say, he was quite sure he would still love her if he had.
“M-aaaaaa-rty!” rings the voice of one Miss Penny Paige.
No response.
“MARTY!” the girl barks.
“What? What’d I do?”
“It’s not what you did, it what’s you aren’t doing – collating my papers.”
Marty, unfortunately, doesn’t enjoy collating which translates into his language to “I will not collate.” Penny is in luck today, however. The printer/fax/copy combo in the new workroom is down, and Marty will be forced to copy and collate in the downstairs workroom. It is likely that Eve will be in this particular workroom. Marty knows this. He will collate today.
“Give ‘em here. I’ll handle that for you Penny! No problemo,” he shouts, as he practically sprints down the aisle of glowing cubicles. It would be difficult for Marty to break into a full sprint, as he has not worked out since his last year of high school gym, which is probably far more years ago than Marty would care to admit.
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