Office Despot

It's all your fault: I spend a thrilling two hours at our local Office Despot (as in, "if you want your office supplies, you must bow down to my strange and arbitrary dictatorship!"). The employee turnover is so fast that no one ever gets a chance to learn anything, plus there aren't enough people to handle even the most basic customer support. I am there to copy class handouts, a chore that is slightly less exciting than trimming one's toenails. Suddenly, after flawlessly copying dozens of multipaged handouts, the machine decides to change the paper orientation, and spits out 80+ sheets of garbage. I flag down one of the harried sales staff and tell her what happened. "I don't want to pay for all these; the machine malfunctioned."

"Ein devar k'zeh," she shoots back. (Translation: No such thing.) "You must have changed the settings."

"Didn't touch a thing." I'm standing firm on this one.

She grabs the article from my hand, feeds it in, pushes buttons, and voila! The machine hums industriously and offers up a fresh batch of copies with the wrong paper orientation. I detect its slightly smug tone as the copy cycle powers down.

"You must have done something," she insists.

Yes, yes, I confess: I'm actually gifted with a powerful aura, just like Uri Geller, that causes copy machines to convulse just by standing next to them.

She sullenly deducts the bad copies from my total and flounces off, leaving me and another six people waiting in line at a now-deserted checkout.

And that's why I call them Office Despot.

A brief spot of sunshine: a friend from the States is in Karmiel oh-so-briefly, and we get together for lunch. I feel naughty and slightly decadent for taking time off when I can hear the list of Urgent To-Do Items calling to me. But it's worth it.

Onward, onward... my lists beckon.