For want of a nail, the shoe was lost
“Help me look for it,” John Fitzsimmons leaned forward on his desk. His rotund form kept firmly planted in the chair, feverishly shuffling papers and folders around on his desk.
“Yes, sir,” came the high pitched squeak of his assistant, Janice. A brunette wearing a frumpy, brown dress strode into his office, glasses askew on her crooked nose encircled by frizzy, dark hair. “When did you see it last?”
“It was right here!” pounding his meaty fist on the desk. “I know the cursed thing didn’t just get up and walk away. The admiralty will carve my keister if we don’t get this done.”
There’d be a lot of flesh to carve, Janice thought to herself, ducking below the desk so she could roll her eyes without his noticing… not that he ever needed a reason to berate her. Getting down on her hands and knees, she looked under the desk. “Maybe it rolled away, sir. When did you stamp the last requisition?”
“How the hell should I know! You’re the bloody secretary.”
“Well, sir…” pursing her lips, she got off the floor, “it doesn’t seem to be here. I can order another stamp, but that will take at least a week for Billings & Markers to process. Can’t you submit this requisition without it?”
“No,” John glumly replied. “The State Office has a new director and he’s been angling to find a way to remove me from office.” He began digging into his breast pocket, “we may have gotten off to a difficult start… I, uhm, may have mistaken his wife as entertainment for the Governor’s banquet.”
“You didn’t,” Janice accused.
“How was I to know she wasn’t a prostitute?” He removed a silken cloth from his pocket, “good heavens, she certainly dressed the part.” John wiped his brow, “anyways, we’ve got to find that stamp! This replacement boiler requisition needs to be submitted today, the Fontly is due to depart by week’s end and they fumbled about trying to get the proper paperwork." John in typical Navy fashion, those louts.”
“Now I’ll have the Grand Admiral climbing up my backside! All because his folks can’t file a simple 1067-Form #3 right the first five times. How hard is it to remember 10-point fonts and onyx-black ink? What kind of idiot uses coal-black ink for a purchase request?” He stuffed the cloth back in his breast pocket scouring his desk, hoping the stamp would magically appear. “Oh lord, the Admiralty will have my guts for garters! If only the Fontly hadn’t taken so long to get the right documents in, I wouldn’t be in this mess. ”
Maybe if you weren’t such a bumbling imbecile, you wouldn’t be in this mess, Janice harshly considered. Moving to the bookshelves, she dutifully shuffled the dusty tomes around, confident he’d never even approached the bookshelf, let alone lost the stamp over there.
After a few more minutes of searching, she left him frantically shuffling the same six papers and folders on his desk and went to fill out a new stamp requisition form.
