It's Amazing How Some People Find Their Way Home

When I first began working for Mr. Panty-Waist, he told me, “I have no organization. I need organization.”

So, I organized.

Mr. Panty-Waist’s idea of a filing system was mountainous piles of paper on his office floor in no logical order or system. So I filed everything I could get my hands on in his empty filing cabinets, labeled everything with colored tabs – a different color for each client. I boxed up files from the 1980s (really, WTF?!) and sent them to storage. I ordered hanging inboxes to hang on the end of my cube, so that when people dropped off things for him to sign or review, they would be right there in the inbox ready for his perusal. I even bought colored folders and designated different colors for different categories of materials, such as financial documents, client documents, HR documents, etc. If he was looking for invoices to sign off on, he would know to grab the green folder, where a whole exciting world of finance and numbers awaited his ok. For client materials to review - well he would know those were yellow. Great plan, right?

Wrong.

I came in one morning to find him standing by the inboxes, a confused, troll-like frown burrowing into his enormous, stupid fivehead, like the one on Encino Man’s face when confronted with modern day California. Not that I wish to imply that I’ve seen that dreadful movie but....

“I need to sign the invoice from Client A.” Mr. Panty-Waist was muttering. “But it’s not in here.”

“That’s because you’re looking in the purple folder – for general office materials.” I told him. “Finance is in the green folder cunningly labeled ‘finance’.”

He let out an exasperated blast of air and looked agitated. “It’s too complicated!” he complained. “I don’t have time to check four folders. Just put them all together.” And he heaped everything into one folder and threw it back into the inbox, exasperated.

So much for organization. Only a perpetually confused, farting imbecile like Mr. Panty-Waist could ever find memorizing four colors so perplexing.

For the rest of the long, excruciating months I worked there, I had to hear whining on a daily basis about, “Where is Document A? Where is Form C? Why can I never find anything?” to which I wanted to reply, “Well you can’t find your ass with a map, a giant arrow and a flashlight so why is that a great fucking surprise?”