By Jim Hagarty
1988
I needed a stapler and so I asked a fellow worker if she would lend me hers.
“I don’t have it, right now,” she said. “I think it’s on You Know Who’s desk.”
“Oh no,” I replied. “Not there. Tell me it’s anywhere but there.”
“Sorry,” she answered. “He borrowed it from me yesterday. I gave it to him without thinking.”
This was not good news. Things aren’t easily retrieved from the desk where You Know Who sits. Especially items as small as a stapler. Many a good man and woman has regretted trying to find something there.
Apprehensively, I walked back to his desk and took a look. It was just as I thought. No, it was worse. The King of Klutter reigned supreme. Captain Chaos was at the helm. Hurricane Holy Mackerel had blown ashore.
I gasped.
“I’m going in alone, boys,” I said to two reporters who sit next to You Know Who. “I’ll tie a rope around my waist. If I tug on it three times, it means I’m in trouble. If I’m not out in an hour, call the fire department.”
“Not so loud,” said one of them. “He might be in there somewhere.”
Poor You Know Who. Among all his good qualities, the ability to maintain a tidy desk can’t be counted. His desk in the newsroom and the five-foot-square cubicle it occupies have been the target for many a sling and arrow since shorty after he started work as a reporter at the newspaper. I’ve never let one fly, of course, and never would. But others less kind than I have shown no mercy in their pursuit of new retorts to put down his work area.
Comparisons between You Know Who’s desk and a landfill site are the most frequent insults thrown his way by his fellow workers and frankly, I think the comments are wearing thin. Some say a grassy berm should be planted around it to reduce the environmental impact and others worry about contaminants infecting the water supply. It’s also been suggested the site be filled in when it’s full.
Those with even less imagination and even crueler tongues have tried to compare the desk to a disaster at a nuclear plant. Like the damaged reactor at the Chernobyl site in the Soviet Union, they think it should be encased in concrete for hundreds of years.
I can hardly believe the gall of the reporter who warned another reporter he shouldn’t go near You Know Who’s desk unless he’d had his shots. This is ridiculous. You don’t need to get inoculated every time you approach his work area.
On, above and below his desk are the following items: Ceramic cups, pop cans, bottles, bank books, towels, boxes, paperbacks, clothing, golf balls, file folders, manila envelopes, record albums, blank cheques, posters, scrapbooks, a thermos, calendars, and shoes. In his cubicle are more old newspapers than are on file at the local archives. Four of the five basic food groups are represented. A few brass figurines are strewn here and there in an attempt at decor and stuffed among all the debris is a sweater. Last time I looked there was no one wearing it.
From time to time, almost as in a ritual, You Know Who carefully brings himself a cup a coffee from downstairs, clears a small area on the desk and sets it down, pries the lid off the foam cup, sits back and then, with the back of his hand or an elbow, knocks the whole thing over. This serves to leave a distinguishing feature on his possessions, much like an artist signing his work.
Challenged about this, You Know Who denies that his desk is messy at all and honestly wonders just what all the fuss could be about. Even if he will concede there are tidier desks in the office, he’s convinced that it is us and not him who needs help.
“A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind,” reads a poster above his computer.
If that is true, my guess is You Know Who has the healthiest mind for 40 miles around.
If it isn’t true, I can only ask, is there a team of psychiatrists in the house?
