WARNING - Klutz at Work

I try, I really do.  Appearances would suggest otherwise, but actually I really do try to :

a)  Look presentable
b)  Not say entirely reprehensible things
c)  Behave in a manner befitting my age and experience

FAIL

I think I should embrace my Klutziness.  It appeared when I was very small and is showing no signs of abating.

Last year I returned to work after 16 years (!) spent bringing up my delightful citizens-of-the-future, Kinder Nos.1-3.
I was very nervous and blah blah blah, but now - after a long period of service (8 1/2 months) - I liked to think I was perhaps making a bit of a name for myself.  Heaven knows I am only going in for 7 1/2 hours a week, spread over three days, to do the filing...but I like to do it with a sense of professionalism and pride.  I file properly.



And Filing is a job not without its hazards.  Papercuts, people.  Surely no-one would deny the sting-y pain of a papercut?  At the the end of my first week I came home with plasters on every finger.  Two on some.  I needed a cup of tea and some paracetamol.  (Also it wrecks your nails.  But that's more of an aesthetic thing rather than medical :-) )

Bit like this only more plasters
 and less Michael Jackson-y

But I toughened up, and now the papercuts are fewer and farther between.  Now it seems I've found a whole other way to make my mark.

It's a Professional Office.  These people have letters after their names.  They deal with important clients and they behave and dress accordingly.  And then there's me.

Last week, I was busily putting bits of paper where they should go - entirely oblivious to what was happening on my shirt.  Which was a large, blood-red, stain. Slap bang in the middle.
I looked like I'd been run through with a broadsword.

Bit like this only more ladies' shirt-y

The culprit was a leaking red pen in the same section of the pen tidy as the ruler I use.  (I use it to mark where the files come from.  It works brilliantly and saves oodles of time. I'm quite proud).  The ink had collected at the bottom of the pen tidy and,indeed, the bottom of my ruler.

Of course I did it right at the beginning of my shift, and so had to spend the next 2 1/2 hours looking like an extra from a Sam Peckinpah film.

The pen tidy was washed out and the leaky pen duly disposed of.

Bit like this only less orange

Then yesterday (Wednesday), I took a break from the filing shelves to ask my supervisor a question.  It was quite a long question as I recall and she looked at me and said, "Why have you got blue ink on your cheek?"

Thinking it was just a streak of biro, I rubbed at my cheek, but it was not so.  It was a chunking great splot of actual blue ink - which I had now rubbed all over the side of my face.  I managed to wash most of it off, but was left with an unholy pallor on one half of my face.

This morning, as I retrieved my File Place Marker Ruler from the pen tidy I was careful to check the end.  And I was jolly glad I did!  There was a big old sticky patch of blue ink - just waiting to spread itself on my clothing or my person, or both.  A ha! I thought.  Foiled you!  Indeed, I cried out loud, 'A ha!  I'm not getting caught like that again, thank you very much!  I have spent too many days covered in ink!' and took the ruler off for a wash in the kitchen sink and cleaned out the pen tidy with some paper towels.  

Then I gathered up the accoutrements of my filing day - the clean ruler in one hand, and a rubber thimble thingy for the thumbing through of paperwork on my right index finger.  

It was then that a co-worker stopped to talk to me and I guess I must have been fiddling as she spoke because soon I was aware of a warm feeling in my right ear.  I looked down at my hand and saw that it was covered in blue ink.  

My actual hand after 3 hours and several hand-washing sessions *

Then it dawned on me...

"Um....is my ear blue?" I asked.  

Indeed it was. 

Bit like this only my ear and with real ink in it

Now I can accept that it was unfortunate that two pens leaked into a pen tidy containing my ruler on two separate occasions.
But my question is this.  How did a rubber thimble thingy, that was in an entirely separate part of the pen tidy, become filled - and I do mean filled - with blue ink?

Bit like this only less clean

I put it to you that I was the victim of Sabotage with Malice Aforethought.

I'm going to have eyes in the back of my head from now on...eyes in the back of my head.

* I am bound to point out (after a lengthy exchange with a friend) that my index finger is not abnormally short, nor my middle finger extraordinarily long.  It is just the angle I am holding my fingers at for the photo.  My hands, when not over-dry or covered in ink, are quite ordinary, bordering on the 'artistic'.  Just so you know.