My quest at work today

At work today I was asked to locate some random textbook. I was given almost no information on this book other than the series it belonged to and told to check a particular place in another building. After making the roundabout and labyrinthine trek, I found myself in a small library whose classification system seemed determined by the drunken hurling of darts at various places on the shelves. But a nice lady who smelled like cocoa butter overheard me muttering frustratedly to myself, and rather than deciding I was a crazy person instead offered to help me. She directed me to another lady who had just washed her hair, so she smelled like gardenias. There turned out to be about a million different varieties of the kind of text I was sent after and I had no idea which was the right one. So we didn't find the stupid thing, but I like it when people who smell nice are nice to me.

So I made the perilous return journey back to my little office and Googled what very little data I possessed on my quarry. The publishing company's website presented their information on their product in such a way as likened to a crime scene where one can piece together the whole story if one happens to possess the deductive abilities of Sherlock Holmes. Still, my meager talents managed to glean to a reasonable degree of surety the correct edition of the textbook I sought. So back through the tunnels and back in the library. But try as I might, I could not locate this volume among the literary miasma on those shelves. Then it suddenly occurred to me-- practically everyone here has a little shelf in their office packed with textbooks. Perhaps it had wandered away from its brothers and into a less... haphazard locale.

You see, the educational non-profit for which I am currently working, has a corporate culture such that nobody ever closes the doors to their offices. Even when they leave for the day, nothing ever gets closed up. Normally this drives me batty, as not only do I very much prefer people not being able to look in on me every time they pass by, but the orientation of my desk means I have to sit with my back to the open door. Today, however, this worked to my advantage. There is almost nobody actually in the office today-- apparently most of them work Fridays from home --and hall after hall of open offices. So I prowled around, ninja-like, and dug through everyone's bookshelf, until, at length and at last, I found the volume I had spent the last several hours searching for.

Giggling to myself in triumph, I was so pleased with my cunning and my disregard for the personal space of others I hardly thought of the byzantine journey to return to my office. I copied the relevant pages-- the knowledge of which, honestly, was my only real clue as to which book was proper --and scurried back to the breached perimeter to replace the text before anyone ever noticed it was gone. I triumphantly sent the fruits of my labors to the boss that requested it, and have now rewarded myself by taking the time to relate this all to you.