I’m glad the temp job ended when it did, I was starting to exhibit that strange behavior that I’m prone to when I have a basic office job.

For example, I had become a kind of paperclip elitist. It was one of those things when you deal with paper clips all day and you wind up with a drawer full of them and you think, “Gee, I should really thin out these paper clips.” I would spend occasional moments sifting through my growing mountain of paperclips, weeding out the small ones, the ones that were bent out of shape, or those crappy plastic ones I didn’t like. Those who didn’t make the cut were dumped into the massive box of paperclips in the utility closet. Those who stayed served me well.

Soon, I was an evil paperclip dictator, ruling with an iron fist over my hand picked super-army of paperclips. It wasn’t long before the ranks had swelled to sufficient numbers and we were ready to siege the adjacent desk (uninhabited by anyone, but still a worthy conquest).

At that moment, before my paperclips and I laid claim to the land given to us by destiny, I looked over my empire and thought, “Shit, I really need to get out of this job.”

Fortunately, that was my last day. The adjacent desk would be left unconquered; it remained the sole property of the staple remover and rubber finger thingy that sat proudly in the left hand drawer.

I would live to fight another day.