Dumb, de dum dumbies


I work with idiots. Idiots with graduate degrees, but idiots non-the-less.

We moved away from our mail boxes - our beloved mail boxes, so big, so familiar, now so in a different part of the building now. We now have our own mail boxes. We're all grown up.

Our new mail box is just a baby still. it looks just like our old mail box unit, only much smaller , with much less wood and more cardboard. It looks better than it sounds. In it's past life it was used to store forms, lots and lots of forms, it is plenty big enough for our needs and there are many unused slots for future use. It fits in the bottom third of our existing book case and it was free. Bonus.

My first task after we moved was to labele the individual slots Fine. I have a label maker. It was easy and when I was finished it looked very nice. I checked that off my list and moved on to things that were less easy and not going to be as tidy. I thought I was finished with the mail slots. Nah. Of course not. We had three days to get used to the mail boxes. Three long days of having to remember that your name is under your mail slot. Not above, not on the side, not next to it... It is really exhausting having to try to remember that when you see your name you take your mail out from the open slot immediately above it. Above It, not below it, not beside it, above it. I'm so tired now.


"We" couldn't "get" this. I was instructed to "make the labeling more clear". Black letters on white labels. In bold face. I didn't know how much clearer I could make it. I was annoyed. I thought that perhaps braille might be a solution. No, I did a quick poll and we are dumb not blind. I made a note of that. "Not blind, just really, really dumb".

So. I labeled each slot along the side as well. Now, our little mail slots are labeled twice. If they can't find their names now or are confused about where to find their mail... I'll smile and find away to label them a third time, perhaps on the back wall of each slot. Maybe I'll just stand there and direct them to their box, maybe I can cut out the middle man and just walk from office to office and give them their mail personally and we can reject the whole mail slot thing all together.

Then, there was a second labeling issue. We have a number of desk trays that we use to to hold mail and other documents that are to be sent to our satellite offices. These are also labeled clearly. I thought.

Turns out that when I labeled them, clearly along the front of the boxes, I failed to know that if there was paper in the tray, it would block the label!!!! and render the purpose of the tray a mystery. Really, they claimed they couldn't figure out which tray was in use. We send things to four offices. If one of the boxes is rendered anonymous and the other boxes are empty? Which box is being used? I might also note that we aren't exactly sending reams and reams of paper off to the other offices. It can be picked up, actually flicked, you can flick the paper and see what tray it is.

I took a deep breath, cursed each and every one of my fellow employees, a couple more than the others and relabeled the trays, this time in the wall of the book case next to the opening of the tray! No more mysteries.

The next round of complaints is going to be that the mail box unit is too close to the floor and too hard to quickly check your slot. The only free part of the wall available for this would put the boxes beyond the book case - they would now have to go all the way into the "room", which also now is home to our fax machine and a whole bunch of boxes that do not belong to us. It is a small room. A walk in closet with a box case, fax machine and a bunch of large boxes. I bet you money.