The Stapler

         Bitter, brackish coffee is hardly an adequate precursor to the stress of the average office, but somehow I find myself gulping it down by the gallon at 7:00 every week day morning to stifle my disgruntlement.  Upon heavily-caffeinated reflection, I’ve realized that every bit of discontent I feel towards the office in which I work can be focused on one relatively mild staple of workplace production.  That staple is the stapler. 

         At first glance, it is a simple metal implement made by big machines to attach papers of some relation.  This plainness is only a mask for the evil force of anti-creativity within the workplace.  It hopes to don the most innocuous and uninspiring beige suit and tie and bear witness to tempered pleasantries.  It is content to sit in a remote corner of your desk and remind you at a glance of all the paperwork to be shuffled in front of you, signed in triplicate, sent downstairs, lost, found, filed, subjected to third-party inquiry, lost once more, then finally returned to the top of your in-box pile with the faint stench of stress, futility, and despair. 

         Once you get past this almost nauseating anxiety-attack, you can regroup and accept the enemy.  A sharp, efficient click, reminiscent of the practical and modest closed-toe pumps every woman in the office is unfortunate enough to be wearing, is the soundtrack to the process of losing your soul to corporate monotony.  But you aren’t fooled by this unassuming simplicity; you see the stapler is clever in its anonymity--an insipid harbinger of bureaucracy, deadlines, and unnecessary cover letters.  The aversive idea permeates your senses, leaving the bitter metallic aftertaste of ineffectuality. 

         Every ill-fated morning that I bustle in from the sunshine to pick up that cold, familiar office supply, I curse that stapler and everything it stands for.  Perhaps one day I will overcome the stapler’s suffocating rule and remind myself to buy a box of paper clips. 




Word Count: 326