You sit idly by and listen as your coworker bangs his jammed Burgandy Swingline 747 against his desk with enough force to level a small rural farming community in Kansas. While slightly concerned that this might be the beginning of that horrible recurring work related nightmare you’ve been having where you are interviewed at some point by the local news. You tell them “but he was such a hard worker, and used to order our office supplies, I’m not sure what went wrong.” But you know what went wrong, it was the day the stapler jammed. You giggle to yourself at the absurdity of your daydream as you realize he is still bashing his stapler into the desk but now calling it colorful names. You type an IM to someone telling them how so-and-so has finally lost it. You share an L-O-L while giggling quietly at your desks.

You decide to get back to the work that’s piling up on your desk. You grab your trusty Uni-Ball 1.0mm BOLD tip pen and start to write notes on a report you recently printed. The smell of fresh toner fills your cubicle as you lift the pages to your nose to inhale a huge whiff. “Fresh toner, oh how I missed thee,” you think all the while forgetting about the stapler bashing coworker who brought you this fix.

You reach for your stapler, it’s empty. You look through your drawer for more, you’re out. “That’s okay” you tell yourself as you reach for your injection molded from 30% recycled plastics deluxe desk organizer to find you are out of jumbo smooth paper clips. It’s empty, and you don’t remember seeing any when you searched for staples earlier. “Binder clips! That’ll work for now” you imagine. But then you realize that your stapler bashing coworker chained all the binder clips on the floor together and hung them around his cube as if hanging Christmas lights to celebrate last month. “Who celebrates Christmas in July except for furniture and appliance stores?”

The floor is silent. Everyone is waiting anxiously to hear your coworker smash his stapler (or hand) into the desk again. It doesn’t happen. It must be over. “He was such a hard worker, and used to order our office supplies, I’m not sure what—oh wait, I need more staples, I should email him.”

If you need any office supplies, please dig through the online catalog at http://www.officedepot.com and email me the item number, the description, and how many you need.

And check the supply closet first.

Thanks,

-Rex

It’s perhaps the greatest invention of the last decade or so. I dub it the “coffee switch.”

When I first walked out to see what all the commotion was, there were a group of people all standing around watching this. Then they moved on and I tried to take a photo. That’s when the MTA bus photobombed. It worked out well I think.

I’m not sure how much of this light is the new streetlights, and how much extra light the moon is providing, but it’s just plain ridiculous. How about a shot of a streetlight in comparison to the moon?

The moon is the bottom orb of light in this photo. There’s so much lens flare coming off everything that a green orb even appeared. I wish there were a way to dim the new lights a little.

So there you are, your toner cartridges, paper, pens, and staples are all serving you well. It’s been almost a month since you’ve had to worry about your next office supply fix. That’s when you realize your supply may be running out and you start to panic. “What will I do without my Post-It® Brand pop-up notes for pop-up dispensers?!?!?” “How will I fasten these sheets of paper together?!?!?”  “I’ll never be able to write comments again without my Uni-Ball® Gel Grip Gel Ink Pen w/ Comfortable Grip and Medium ball point in Red ink?!?!?” “Woe is me!”

It doesn’t have to end my friends.

Just let me know what office supplies you need, and after checking the supply closet to make sure we don’t already have it, I’ll talk to my guy who knows a guy, and we’ll make sure you get the office supplies you need, as soon as those folks upstairs approve it.

Thanks,

-Rex

So keeping enemies closer seems to be counterintuitive to eliminating pain. Sometimes these aggressors are your coworkers, employers, friends, family, or yourself, and cannot easily be distanced without causing further suffering, although some only immediate and temporary. This path must be weighed. Is this path going to lead to the ultimate goal of being happy, even if it’s going to cause much unhappiness in the immediate future?

Before you can do all this, the enemies must be identified and weighted based on the levels of pain they cause. The suffering they are causing must be identified, qualified, and quantified. The paths to eliminate that suffering must be discovered and their consquential pains identified. Then you must walk down the path or choose to live with the suffering.