The Confetti Conumdrum

How often do you have to punch a piece of paper? Well, I don’t have to do it very often for the simple reason that my filing system consists of my desk and my dustbin. Please don’t be offended by my use of “you”, it is not meant to be a judgement on your punching behaviour, for all I know you are a professional confetti maker and its all part of a day's work.

The thing is my punch doesn’t get a lot of use. This brings to me to today’s conundrum. How come, it is always full? And why does it always fall apart? The latter question is easily answered in my case; it is probably due to neglect. However, in my colleague’s case I somehow doubt it.

Nonetheless in the way that punches have, her’s exploded all over the office. It didn’t fall gracefully apart disgorging its contents into a neat little heap. It flew apart like a high velocity nuclear armament causing a mini Hiroshima in its wake. The device itself, though small, is mighty. Its size is not equitable to its volume.

As the storm began to settle, the little pieces of paper began to mate and breed and give birth. Then those began to mate and breed and give birth. Before we knew what was happening we had 6 generations of confetti all over the bloody floor. Then they began to migrate. They made little pathways out of the door, down the corridor and into other offices. We had an epidemic on our hands.

We contemplated calling the office housekeeper and then quickly discarded that path of action. She is scary and we were guilty. Also we remembered the Case of the Smelly Lunchbox last week that resulted in office wide anarchy. It wasn’t worth risking her wrath.

So we spent the better part of the afternoon on our hands and knees chasing tiny little bits of paper all over the carpet. You can’t just brush the little suckers up either; they leap like demented fleas out of the way. Eventually, we hit on a winning system. Duct tape. We made long streamers of tape and laid them all over the floor before jumping up and down on them.

I swear we got every last one, but the next time I looked I saw we missed a few baby boomers and they were multiplying again. I think some even followed me home.