No Heavy Lifting Required

I don’t even have much to show for most of my day, well, I did. If you had walked into my office around eight this morning, it was obvious I was doing something.There were stacks ands stacks of paper all over the floor and all over the tops of the cabinets - it was a mess and it looked awful. Awful, but at least started. I came in and got right to work (as opposed to coming in and playing on the computer) and I was doing what my boss told me to: I piled the charts and files on top of the cabinets (yes, we are still on the damn cabinets, welcome to my life okay?) and I’m working away pulling files and tugging on recalcitrant cabinets and doing my little thing. I’ve got a lot of files piled up; I’m feeling pretty efficient and workery. It isn’t until then that I notice that the two cabinets that I have so efficiently cleaned out have piles of files piled on top of them. This was dumb. These cabinets had to go; they couldn’t have piles of files piled on them. So I had to move all my piles of files and pile them somewhere else. Somewhere where they would not be able to be in the order they had been, which would have made it easier for me to put them back again when the new cabinets were in place. I hate it when my piles of files are out of order.

Do you know how much your average five drawer filing cabinet weighs? They weigh a lot. The weigh more then you would think and that is when they are empty. Sadly, filing cabinets no matter how empty they are don’t move on their own. You can ask them, but they won’t do it. Over all, cabinets won’t do anything outside the parameters of their job description. They are totally not team players and they will wear only one hat thank you very much. They aren’t going to move themselves.

So. I rounded up some co-workers and we moved the cabinets out. This was not fun and I don’t suggest it to others. The pink collar world does not prepare you to move heavy pieces of office equipment! You don’t sign up for these office jobs because you want to have to shift heavy things, you sign up for these office gigs so that you won’t have to shift heavy things. You don’t get paid much but you don’t have to wear a weight belt either. It’s a trade off.

And even worse, there are no men in the office. No. Men. We had a man in the office but he bolted for the door the first time a better gig came around. Loser. I think he sniffed the air and sensed that he was going to be asked to do more than answer the phones. He just figured the cabinets were going to arrive sooner or later and he didn’t want to have to move them; because before he signed on to answered phones for us he delivered our refrigerator. He was our office Man and his job was to what the rest of us didn’t want to do. If a guy wants to work in a largely pink collar office such as this on, he is going to kill bugs and move furniture it’s not on his official job description but he’s going to do it. It’s kind of like sexual harassment but harder to prosecute. With him gone we used furniture sliders instead.

They are the best things ever. I mean it. They rock and they work just like they say they do. You put under whatever heavy thing you need to move and they allow you to slide that big heavy mother anywhere you need to. Love. Them. It can be kind of a bitch picking up the corners of the heavy thing in order to get the sliders underneath , but it can be done and it’s a small price to pay for sliding instead of lifting/pushing/tugging/hefting/etc.

Have a good weekend, No heavy lifting!!