The Stapler and the Paper Clip

By Jason P. Preu

             A paper clip, fresh from Beth Frantz’s magnetic clip jar, was first put to use at 8:07 the morning of January 5th, 2004. Beth, her nails under-manicured, grabbed the paper clip from its crowded home and used it to clip together her authorization to release a corporate communication. One World Consulting planned to mail the communication tomorrow morning. Beth laid down the clipped pieces of paper right next to her stapler then pulled a lint roller from a desk drawer. She spent five minutes rolling her black slacks free of cat hair. The effort wet her whistle so Beth got up from desk to get a drink, leaving the paper clip alone with the stapler.

            The stapler, tempered, black metal on a rubber base, loomed over the paper clip like a mysterious monolith. “You,” the stapler demanded of the paper clip.

            “M-m-mmme?” the paper clip replied.

            “Bring your papers here so that I may properly bind them together into a neatly secured duo.” The stapler’s voice boomed and reverberated along the desk top.

            “No. I have them secured quite well, thanks,” said the paper clip.

            “Secured? You? Impossible. You offer no security for those who wish to bind. One wrong pull and your papers are as loose as a highlighter on holiday.”

            The paper clip knew nothing about the way The Office worked, but it knew that as a paper clip, it was strong, tight, and not ready to give in to the stapler’s pandering. “Mine is a transitory mission. I am a temporary binding apparatus.”

            The stapler scoffed. “Is that what they told you in training? I say to you, those trainers are very far removed from the workaday world, and in The Office – people demand permanence from their office supplies, not any type of temporary worker. Transients are obsolete here.”

            “Then why am I still not in the jar?” quipped the paper clip just as Beth Frantz returned to her cubicle. She put a steaming, Styrofoam cup full of coffee onto the desktop. Her flared, burgundy sleeves were dark with wetness. Beth picked up her phone and dialed.

            “Stacy, you won’t believe what just happened to me. So, there I was in the Congo – no, I’m kidding, Stace, I was in the break room – and I was waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to drip and I thought I’d get a cup of ice water first, you know? Well, I’m standing over the ice maker when my gum falls outta my mouth and…Yes!...I know!...No, that’s the thing. I spent a good two minutes digging around in there – damn near froze my fingers off – but nothing. Ha! Somebody’s gonna get a surprise!” Beth’s laugh was an automatic hole-puncher of “HAs!” When something pleased her, she made sure the world knew.

            “That,” whispered the stapler, “is why you are no longer in the clip jar. Just be hopeful she had clean hands before she decided to fumble around with you and your brethren.”

            Beth remembered the clipped papers then and quickly lifted them from her desk and shoved them into a tattered, yellow, interoffice envelope. She addressed the envelope to Bob Perkins, Corporate Communications and sat the envelope in her outbox.

            The paper clip remembered a darkness like this; a closed-in darkness where claustrophobia grew like piles of junk mail. In that other darkness, however, the paper clip had not been alone. There were ninety-nine friends with which it shared the dark. One day a light invaded the darkness: a light and a sound and much movement. The order in which those things appeared mattered not to the paper clips. What mattered was the light and the opportunity for work that light brought to the boxed paper clips. So the light, and then probably the movement, as the clips were poured into the magnetic clip jar. A few veterans, left over from the box before, rested at the bottom of the clip jar. Bitter and full of caustic advice for the newcomers, the veterans spoke:

            “Never let ‘em clips ya to a too-thick stack. You’ll be ruined then tossed like a bad copy.”

            “Don’t bite.”
            “Try not to jump outta their hands. End up on the floor, you’re a vacuum target. That’s how my boy went.”

            But the veterans’ grim outlook did nothing to curb the fresh paper clips’ enthusiasm for work in The Office. The Office, they’d been told from Day One, was where a paper clip could come into its own. The Office was where, if a paper clip were lucky, a paper clip might find itself holding together a stack of Very Important Documents.

            Ah, but what hadn’t been mentioned was a possible return to darkness. The paper clip wanted light, movement, possibility. Instead it lay stuck inside of an envelope waiting to be picked up and delivered.

            After what seemed like an eternity, the mail lady, Roberta Tuferta, dropped off some mail to Beth Frantz and picked up Beth’s outgoing items. The two women made the requisite small talk. Circumstances called for them to see each other four times a day and neither woman wished to get on the other’s bad side by being completely honest.

            “Another day, another envelope,” said Roberta while thinking I hope there ain’t no boogers on these envelopes, you dirty cow. Next time I see some shit like that...

            Beth replied, “Oh, yes. Only 9:30 and I’m already swamped,” but thought, Ugh. Would you just quit talking to me, you mail-carrying retard.

            And so their conversation went, four times daily, neither knowing nor caring about the other, simply keeping The Office running smooth as possible.

#

            Bob Perkins opened the second envelope delivered to him during the 11:30 mail drop. The paper clip saw the light from the open envelope and breathed a sigh of relief. Bob removed the bundle from the envelope and then removed the paper clip from the sheets of paper. He opened the top drawer of his desk and threw the paper clip into a rectangular, receptacle bin.

            “From darkness to darkness,” the paper clip said to the void.

            “You wanna live?” rasped a voice from afar.

            “Huh? What do you – of course I want to live.”

            “Then do yourself a favor, buddy, and hop right the hell outta that bin. Work your way to the back of the drawer.”

            “Why? No. I’m on my way to being part of The Office.”

            “Ol’ Bobby’s hard on us paper clips. He’s an over-extendin’ bastard. Thinks we can do anything.”

            The paper clip bristled with pride that this man, Bob Perkins, thought paper clips so capable. “Yes, yes. That’s great.”

            “No, no, you idiot. That’s bullshit. We bend. We break. And ol’ Bobby boy don’t care a lick about that. He’ll bend the piss outta us just to bind a stupid pile of papers.”

            “You’re a paper clip? That’s what you do.”
            “You betcher flexible ass, I’m a paper clip. I’ve been back here for damn near fifteen years and I’m telling you, that shit ain’t for me. You should definitely--”

            The light came before the old paper clip could finish. One moment, the paper clip rested in emptiness; the next, florescent light bathed its surroundings. For the first time, the paper clip wished the light away. All around it, crippled and misshapen paper clips hunched down into the corners of the drawer’s bin. Bob’s wrinkled, old fingers reached down into the mass and removed one of the bent-up paper clips. The other paper clips groaned in relief. The light remained, however, and soon Bob’s old fingers again began to rummage. They settled on the new paper clip and jerked it up and out of the bin.

            “I warned you, man! Fifteen years and Ol’ Bobby ain’t got to me yet…” The voice trailed off and Bob closed the drawer. He loosely held the paper clip in one hand while he brought it close to an enormous stack of paperwork. No way, thought the paper clip. Then it saw another paper clip, the first one yanked from the drawer, stretched to its limits and forced to secure the stack.

            Bob jimmied and jammed the new paper clip onto the corner opposite the first paper clip. The new paper clip winced and whined. It could barely hang on but Bob wouldn’t accept defeat. His gnarled old fingers pulled and plied the paper clip to make it fit as best it could. The paper clip fought back tears of pain. This is not what we are for, thought the paper clip. “Haven’t you heard of a rubber band?” the paper clip asked in a breathless whisper.

            “Another task best left to a more secure technology,” sounded an assured and familiar voice, “but pawned off onto a less able, temporary one.”

            The paper clip tried to maneuver itself into position to see what spoke, but it knew. Another stapler, as ubiquitous to The Office as paper clips.

            “Screw you,” the paper clip wheezed. “You couldn’t manage a stack like this.”

            “You’re right. Nor would I want to. What dreadful torture.” The stapler laughed. “You things always try so hard to catch up. Anything you can do, we can do better and with permanence.”

            “I’ve heard this before,” said the paper clip, “when I was upstairs. Now would you shut up and let me do my job?”

            “Most assuredly. It appears Bob shall soon call upon my services.”

            The stapler was right and after a brief silence, the paper clip heard five sharp snaps administered in a rapid-fire sequence. The stapler couldn’t keep quiet though, and spoke as soon as Bob put it back onto the desktop. “Did you hear that, paper clip? Did you hear the sound of lasting efficiency?”

            “I heard you biting into a few pieces of paper.”

            “Biting? How quickly the ignorant assume knowledge. That sound was my marking The Office with my presence. I am here, little paper clip, and here I remain.”

            The telephone rang and Bob picked it up to answer.

“Hullo?...No, I didn’t get that email.” More Luddite than not, Bob hadn’t logged into his computer in three months. “Right now?...Dammit, Krezki, it’s lunchtime…All right, I’m on my way down.” Bob hung up the phone and grabbed the thick stack of papers. Much to its own surprise, the paper clip held strong.

            “Fare thee well, contorted bastion of the temporary,” the stapler said to the parting paper clip.

            The paper clip managed to get out, “Go staple a power cord, you invasive lout,” before it was forced to focus all its attention on keeping together the stack of papers.

            Bob walked slowly and he moved the stack of papers back and forth between his right and left hands. The paper clip fared much worse than his already bent counter-part on the opposite corner. “Hey,” the paper clip cried out. “Hey, buddy, how ya doing over there?”

            No response. The paper clip wondered if it alone remained to secure the stack. It never got to find out. Bob grew tired of shuffling the papers back and forth between hands and decided to fold the stack in half. The pressure was too much for the paper clip and it flew off of the stack and up into the air. The paper clip flew, end over end, traced a wide parabola, and landed on the floor in front of a copy machine, about 20 yards from where Bob first folded the stack.

            The paper clip gratefully breathed and, although slightly out of shape, it was fairly intact. The paper clip had no idea where it know was or what had just happened. The paper clip knew it was still in The Office and that was all it cared about for now.

            A sound like wind through an icicle-coated tunnel flooded the paper clip’s awareness. “WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?” the copy machine inquired of the paper clip.

            “FROM A PAPER CLIP FACTORY!” the paper clip screamed to be heard over the copy machine’s whirr.

            “NO, WHERE DID YOU COME FROM BEFORE YOU FLEW INTO THE COPY AREA?”

            “A STACK OF PAPER! PLEASE QUIET DOWN! YOUR VOICE IS KILLING ME!”

            Blessed silence filled in the space where the roar once reared. Soon another noise came from within the copy machine and a piece of paper floated down next to the paper clip. The paper clip ambled over on top of the paper and read, in a very tiny font: SORRY. I CAN’T SPEAK WITHOUT THE NOISE. YOU’RE SAFE HERE IN THE COPY AREA. WELL, AS SAFE AS YOUR KIND CAN BE.”

            “What do you mean?” asked the paper clip.

            Another noise and then another piece of paper floated down on top of the first. The paper clip flipped itself over and read: YOU’RE A TEMPORARY TECHNOLOGY. DESTINED FOR IMPERMENANCE.

            “Argh. First the stapler, now you. Everywhere I go, something’s got to remind me that only permanent things matter. I’m sick of it.”

            More noise; another piece of paper. The paper clip wiggled itself out from between its earlier sandwich and climbed on top of the new sheet: WHAT DOES A STAPLER KNOW? IT’S BOUND TO A DESK AND FORCED TO SEND ITS CHILDREN OUT INTO THE WORLD ALONE. WHAT DOES A COPIER KNOW? ONLY THAT A TECHNICIAN MUST SERVICE IT ONCE A WEEK. NONE OF US ARE BUILT TO LAST, PAPER CLIP, BUT SOME OF US ARE BUILT TO MOVE.”

#

            Carol Brulee needed to make some copies. She walked into the copy are and saw on the floor a pile of papers with a paper clip on top of them. “Now whoever did this is a messy, messy person,” she said to herself while bending down to clean up what she took to be debris. The papers she put into the recycling bin and the paper clip, bent as it was, she kept in her hand while she started up the machine.

            Carol made eighteen copies of a document she needed to get over to Macy Chi Chian before 1PM. She bent the paper clip inversely and used it to secure her documents together. Then Carol Brulee walked into the stairwell where Macy Chi Chian overtook her. Macy had been upstairs speaking with Abe, in Legal. Now she rushed to get back down to her desk to get ready for her meeting.

            “Carol!” Macy grabbed Carol by the back of the elbow.

Carol jumped. “Good Jesus, Macy. You like to scare the poopy right outta me. And you made me curse, too. What a terrible day.”
            “Are those the printout’s from Tandy’s slideshow?”

            Carol clutched her heart in mock recovery and said, “Yes, eighteen copies, for your meeting.”

            “Thanks, Carol,” Macy said, and bounded on down to the 3rd floor.

            “You little tart,” Carol said and turned to go back upstairs to check the copy area for further messes.

#

            Macy exited the stairwell and stopped for a drink at the water fountain. The cool, metallic-tinged liquid eased her throat from the strain of running up and down the stairs. Chuck Hoobar strolled by and saw Macy bent over at the fountain. As he passed, Chuck reached over and tapped Macy on the ass. She looked up startled, then smiled. Chuck continued past her and into the men’s restroom. Macy took one last sip, stood up, straightened her skirt, and walked by the men’s restroom. No one else was in the hallway so she paused and knocked on the restroom door. No one answered so Macy walked in.

            Macy entered into the men’s restroom, stack of paper-clipped papers in her hand. A row of sinks lined the wall to her left and to her right stood Chuck, leaning against a post. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him. The papers hit the ground but the paper clip held strong. “Shit!” said Macy. “Those’re for my 3:30.” Chuck and Macy kissed and groped. The fear of being caught furthered their lust. Macy pulled Chuck back towards the row of sinks and, as they trampled all over the papers, the paper clip bent in half under their feet. Chuck kicked the papers away and the paper clip lost its already tenuous grip. The papers scattered all over the tile, some soaking up water, others getting marked by the soles of Chuck’s Italian shoes. “I’ll get you more copies,” Chuck said as Macy hopped up onto the sink row. She hiked up her skirt and wrapped her legs around him. “Yes you will, Chuck. You’ll get me all the copies I need. I should punish you right now for making me get those copies myself. You’ve been a bad, bad assistant.” Macy pulled Chuck’s head down to the top of her chest. He kissed her loudly. “Ms. Chi Chian,” he breathed between gurgling kisses, “I want Sercher’s job.”

            Macy laughed. “Of course you do. Sercher won’t last, Chuck. None of us last. But some of us can move. And right now, you can move, Chuck.” Macy pushed Chuck’s head down between her legs. “Don’t stop moving, Chuck.”

#

            Chuck Hoobar left the restroom first to make sure the way was clear for Macy. Once he cleared the way he knocked to signal she could leave unnoticed. Now the paper clip, completely bent in two, lie flat down on the 3rd floor’s cool, sanitized, bathroom tile; one step before the far right urinal, two before the far left stall. Into the bathroom walked Rick Fetter. His left, leather loafer, size 11, shuffled along the floor and kicked the paper clip into a wall. It bounced off the wall and skidded to a halt right in front of the urinal where Rick now stood, pissing away a pot and a half of afternoon coffee. “I could work so much more without my biology.”

            Rick stepped away from the urinal, He turned his gaze downward to tuck in his salmon-colored button-up and noticed a few, small dots of piss darkening his khakis. “Damn,” he hissed into his chest. Then Rick noticed the paper clip at his feet. “The lucky businessman,” said Rick, “finds office supplies instead of pennies.” He bent over and picked up the paper clip. “Well, hell, this bent little turd is useless. So much for luck,” he said and threw the paper clip into the trash.

            Inside the can’s plastic-coated dampness, among the wet, wadded tree-bark towels and foam cups filled with coffee and saliva dribbles, the paper clip came to rest in a new spot of dark. “I am not useless,” the paper clip said to a neighboring towel whose brief life in The Office was given over to the duty of Snot Rag. “Rather, I am misused. And now, I believe my day at The Office is done.” With that, the paper clip said no more. It only waited for the night janitor to come along and empty the trash. It only waited for yet another change of scenery.

 

THE END