"is this the best you can do?"

When I started this here job, I told myself I'd be good and not blog at work. For the first week, I didn't even check my blog for fear of leaving the address in the computer's history. By week two I was happily using my blog's links to check all my usuals. It's now week three, and not only am I blogging at work, I am about to blog about work at work, in an open office, which means I sit four feet away from my superiors. I am fully aware of the stupidity of this, but you've probably discerned by now that my middle name is not Prudence. (For those who care, it's Michele, with one "L", because I'm 1/16th I-talian.)

As mentioned before, I am a glorified secretary. Come to think of it, it's not even glorified--the name has just changed to "administrative assistant" in this era of political correctness. I exist to do all the crappy work that no one else wants to do. And I understand this. I wouldn't want to staple a five-inch stack of two- and three-page documents every day either. But now I do this, because I was clueless and unprepared when I graduated from college. And those who were prepared, like the analysts, are my age and graduates of similar colleges and now get to ask me to fetch them new garbage cans. I don't regret any of the choices I've made in recent years since none of them have seriously destroyed my life, so I can accept my current lot. The perks here help, as do the friendly people, including my often amusingly crazy bosses. But when 8.5 Million Dollar House Boss just chastised me for improper photocopying of a book ("if you press harder you won't get that grey area in the middle") it was all I could do to say "ok" without unleashing the classic Gina anti-authority attitude ("Is the grey area really compromising your ability to read this? I don't think so.") Especially when redoing it involves copying each page separately, then rotating every other page of the resulting document so that when I copy it double-sided (a necessity for 8.5 Boss, the other prefers two pages on each side and then double-sided) the backsides of the pages won't be upside down (which is the standard copier setting.)

[Disclaimer: 8.5 Boss is actually a really funny guy, and he has a good heart and appears to be in possession of a soul. He's just a little OCD. So things could be far, far worse. For example, I could have taken over Drone's position at his former place of employment.]