Who Stole The Scissors?

Back in the day….
When I was twenty two years old; the world still had fresh air and my new job as office manager came with a few challenges. My seven staff members were all women with children, family, home and work balanced neatly on their small paychecks. We believed in and trusted each other.

The reason for this story is not to bore you with the mundane for we were at best, normal for a group of working women; we were at worst normal for a group of poor working women. I didn’t realize we were poor until I became responsible for the office P&L and saw first hand the seemingly vast revenue stream brought in by the sales men who dropped their new client files on our desks each day by noon and promptly headed for the golf course.

Working through these files meant using offices supplies….LOTS of them....file folders for duplicate copies, reams of paper, boxes of copy toner, and staples. Friday’s supply order became routine until I noticed an item kept popping up on my group’s supply order – scissors. Unlike paper or even paper clips, scissors had a certain ‘shelf life’ that didn’t warrant reordering so often. This was a time when scissors cost considerably more than today, were made here in America and made quite well, I might add.

But still, I asked…”Are they breaking?”

No, came the reply.

“Then why reorder? “

Can’t find my pair, came the meek reply over and over.

The mystery of the missing scissors continued until corporate wrote me up for exceeding the quarterly supply budget. Now it was serious! We are talking about my job here. The problem was eventually eliminated but the question of what happened to a dozen or so scissors remained unanswered. My staff came to the realization that there was someone who cared just as much about ‘how’ the job was done as the results.

In fairness to this story, we were marooned in a poor rural area of America before the internet. These were the 60s. The moral and social sappers were beginning their work. Yet, mid-west Americans valued family and faith. I had to believe that the scissors were taken by aliens from another galaxy. To believe anything else would only lead to disaster for one of us. As Pascal wrote, “the heart has reasons that the mind knows not”. Knowledge follows love; it does not precede it.

It wasn’t about the scissors. It was and is about staying responsible; respecting others property; and remaining truthful. All good office policy.