One of my longest temp positions was at a company that sold movie memorabilia. Though you might think otherwise, most of our customers were not people who wanted to own autographed 8x10” photos of celebrities - no, they were people who thought they should buy autographed 8x10” photos of celebrities in the hopes that other people in the future, who did not have the foresight to buy these collectibles now, would someday pay more money for those items, once they realized they wanted them. And yet these people never realized they were one and the same - the speculators were speculating on themselves. For this reason, I believe, the company eventually folded, but that’s putting the cart before the horse.
I held a few temp positions at this company - my first being an Invoice Clerk. I would help not only to check on bills that were being printed, but often I would do the printing myself on a tractor-feed printer, an ancient behemoth that sat in a semi-soundproofed room and only needed maintenance once every couple hours. Had the unit exploded and sent shards of plastic into my brain in the process, it would have been preferable to doing that job.
There were four of us in the Invoicing Department. The only other male, Seth, quickly became my partner in observing the weirdness of the other two. This was my salvation.
One of the other two Invoice Clerks was Jane. She was an odd girl, a little younger than the rest of us. She couldn’t pass by someone - even if she didn’t need that person to move out of her way - without saying, “Exsqueeze me!” in a shrill, giddy tone. She was also an excessive thanker, beating “Thank you, kind sir!” into the ground daily.
Jane’s biggest claim to fame, though, was her unusual allergy. Some people are allergic to foods, cats (guilty), and even to certain chemicals or medicines. But Jane’s body went one step further in its rejection - she was allergic to the fluids in her own eyeballs. Because of this, her eyelids were always inflamed up to her eyebrows, with tears frequently dripping down her face. She blinked constantly and rubbed her eyes every chance she got. You felt sorry for her when you first met her, and tried to imagine how irritated she must be all the time. Then it just got annoying to be around.
As she told it, the size of Mickey’s head, and his ears in particular, made him perfect for personal grooming. You see, Nelly used that pen to clean out her ear wax. This was done a few times a day, right out in the open.The other person in our group was Nelly. Nelly was a gruff woman who had a problem with most everyone in the office. She was on a smoke break every twenty minutes, and the Nicotine scent was so fragrant on her that she likely caused a few non-smokers to go into coughing fits just from being in her vicinity.
Nelly didn’t speak much, but when she did, you could usually only make out a few words - mostly curses. She had a beef with many people, and had come close to physical altercations in the workplace several times. Once, she nearly throttled a member of the cleaning crew for throwing out some of her work... which she kept on the floor, in a ratty old cardboard box, near her trash can. Chuck, the guy who threw it out, was a grizzled biker with a nasty-as-can-be attitude, but even he backed off from Nelly when she threatened him in front of a group of co-workers. The woman was pure beast.
Nelly also had a very special item on her at all times - a personal totem of sorts. It was a metal ballpoint pen with a tiny Mickey Mouse on the end. Nelly liked Disney as much as anyone (though she bought the pen in the mall, not at the theme park, which she took pride in) but it wasn’t the animated mascot that bonded her with this pen. As she told it, the size of Mickey’s head, and his ears in particular, made him perfect for personal grooming. You see, Nelly used that pen to clean out her ear wax. This was done a few times a day, right out in the open. She wasn’t even ashamed of this fact, and stated many times that it was her “Ear Wax Pen”. Blech. Walt Disney’s ghost should have come back and smacked her around a little.
One day, with no warning, Nelly’s Ear Wax Pen went missing. When I walked into the Invoicing room that morning, I heard from Seth and Jane that she was on the warpath, questioning our co-workers in an attempt to suss out the culprit. Unlikely as it may seem, Nelly truly believed that in this office filled with people who knew the true purpose of that pen, someone would have wanted to steal it. Baffling.
When Nelly walked back into the Invoicing room, she was visibly enraged.
She’d already hammered Seth and Jane for any information about the missing pen, but I hadn’t been properly interrogated yet, so she asked:
“Steve, did you take my pen? My Mickey Mouse pen?” She was very direct like this.
Feeling the absurdity of the situation, and (wrongly) assuming Nelly would get my sarcasm, I looked her in the eye and said:
“Yeah, Nelly. I did take it. It’s out in my car right now.” in a deadpan tone. Too deadpan, it turned out.
Desperate for the pen, she continued: “But you just said you took it! WHY DID YOU TAKE MY MICKEY MOUSE PEN STEVE?!” Her face was blood-engorged, and she was close enough to me that I could see the cigarette stains on her gumline. Yuck.Nelly did not sense my facetiousness. “Why did you take it?! You know I use that to clean my ears! It’s the perfect size! I can’t find another pen like that! It was a limited edition!” These were all real words spoken by her. The woman had no sense of shame or decorum.
“Nelly, I was kidding. I didn’t take it. I don’t want your pen - no one here would want it, ever. Maybe you left it somewhere.”
She had me in her crosshairs now. Desperate for the pen, she continued: “But you just said you took it! WHY DID YOU TAKE MY MICKEY MOUSE PEN STEVE?!” Her face was blood-engorged, and she was close enough to me that I could see the cigarette stains on her gumline. Yuck.
I got up and left the room, hoping the situation would diffuse itself. When I returned half an hour later, Nelly didn’t speak to me. This continued for a few days, until, not surprisingly, she found the pen on the floor of her car. I don’t doubt that she immediately picked it up and dug in her ear for a few hours, having been denied its glory for the better part of the week. She was like an animal with that thing.
She found me in the Invoicing room me later that day while everyone else was at lunch and told me the good news. “I found my pen, Steve. It was in my car.”
“Oh, okay. Good, I’m really glad you found it.” I made no attempt to sound sincere.
But this wasn’t good enough for Nelly. She edged in closer to me. We were alone in the room, so it was frightening when she said, looking confused:
“Everyone else said they didn’t take it but you said you DID take it. So why would you say that you DID take it if you DIDN’T take it?” She was coming unhinged.
I thought the truth needed to come out, so I served her a slice of reality.
“Nelly,” I said, “I told you I took your pen because I thought it was crazy of you to think ANYONE would take it! We all know you stick it in your ears to clean the wax out of them, and everyone finds that totally disgusting!”
“Yeah,” she said, “I know. But... but it’s a Mickey Mouse pen... limited edition...” Her voice trailed off in a pathetic way. My stomach sank. Somehow, I’d injured the beast.
“You’re right,” I told her. “You’re right - I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. It is a cool pen.”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad I got it back.” Her anger faded as she sat back down at her desk, her prized writing/ear implement clutched tightly in her hand. I spun around in my chair, not wanting to see the act she was about to perform. In the years since, I’ve often though that Donald’s beak might have better served her purposes.
