Oh come ye corporate trinkets and hang from my fingers like business world novelties.  How you have become a common part of my genetic composition I shall never know.  I am what I eat, I am what I wear and now it seems that I am also where I am.  Yes I confess I have been spawned form the loins of corporate America.  I commute; I have meaningless chitchats at the water cooler, I always ask how someone's weekend was, and always confess that mine was too short just like all the others.  I say "happy Friday" and check my Outlook email box more often than I refresh my lip-gloss.

I wear high heels and smart little suits, I am cool yet distressed, I am the spitting image of a model administrative employee.  I take half hour lunches and two fifteen minute breaks, for the law mandates such shenanigans it seems.  I work well under pressure and I am a quick learner, I problem solve, I multi task, hell I even take out my own trash.  Oh the blasphemy I say.  We are all just cogs in the corporate machine. 

My phone, my very own attention whore screaming for a groping in perfectly timed intervals throughout my entire day.  And even as I am about to leave her she calls for me wanting more and more.  My paperclips are metallic pests, giant ants that have taken over my desk and are spewing over their little anthill of a magnetic cup.  They come from the devil I say, disarm them all and pretzel them into compromising positions fit for an artist's dream.  

My friend tells me she's in a coma for eight hours a day, I say to that, "as am I" and then invite her for a cocktail.  And in those very distinct eight hours I manage to have multiple encounters with displeased office appliances.  I quarrel with the fax machine, a cranky old lady who has worked too hard for too long and keeps threatening to retire if she is not given any more toner.  I plead with her "just this once more my dear and I promise I'll get you your fix."  All lies they are, I don't have the company credit card, I am no boss and the toner is really no concern of mine.  And yet I am she who suffers.  I take a deep breath and move on to the copier, a hungry monster, sluggish and outdated getting papers jammed in every nook and cranny it seems.  He's an old man; I go easy on him, after all things need printing.

Staples and staplers intercourse with one another as the male and female parts fit in perfectly together while I watch them mate.  Calculator, scissors, date stamp, hole- puncher and tape dispenser all sit on my desk like little presents beneath the corporate holiday tree that is the monitor hoping to be unwrapped next.  Such silly hope for such silly tools I think with a smirk as I stamp, collate, and staple away.

"Beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes."  H.D. Thoreau

By: Lucky Clover