So I’m the new office manager. Whoo!
So there’s a lot to be done before school starts. I’m held back from desk-organizing though because the last office manager has not yet collected her stuff. Also I’m currently doing both jobs, so I’ve held onto my desk because that’s the place where I know where everything is.
Therefore I have begun organizing OTHER stuff. Like the three storerooms in my purview.
Across the hall from the office (least accessible in a hurry) is the room for paper and files we can’t get rid of yet, and whatever else gets stuffed in there. As only a few of us have a key, the extraneous stuff wasn’t too terribly much. The one down the inner hall of the office (moderately accessible) holds pencils, pens, writing paper, colored paper, envelopes, binders, gradebooks, paper clips…you get the idea. Of course, sometimes stuff gets stuffed in there too.
The one we call “the vault” is perhaps a 10×6 room with cinder block walls. It’s right next to the office manager’s desk. Usually we keep stuff often called for there–a small supply of pencils and notebooks, glue, et cetera, with more in the back or across the hall. It’s very much the office manager’s private store, from which she doles things out to the teachers and staff. (You think we should just give them whatever they want? Last year someone left the back room open (or someone had a key) and $400 worth of dry-erase markers disappeared. AN ENTIRE YEAR’S SUPPLY.)
Ahem. Anyway. Anyone who’s ever managed anything knows that the manager is the one who gets all the stuff no one else knows what to do with. So the vault has a lot of things in it that made me go “…huh?”
Like an entire box, 15x10x4, of labels. The kind you feed through a dot matrix printer. Remember those? It’s okay if you don’t. They’ve been extinct for a while now.
We’ve been playing a game of “What the hell is this?” with a lot of random finds. And “do we even still have the machine this tape goes to?” as well.
And look at this.
That, for all you young’uns out there, is a word processor. It’s the missing link between typewriters and computers. Yes, it has a floppy disk drive! It’s more modern than the one I typed my novel-attempt-before-my-first-novel on, but I bet the only color that little monitor does is orange.
I found that and I have to wonder–whose was it? Did the teachers quarrel over turns to use it? I know it wasn’t the office manager’s. When I started ten years ago, she was still clinging to her typewriter.
So yeah. The things you find in a school storeroom over summer break…
OMG!!! Laugh, wipe my eyes. laugh some more. Nobody told you that the office manager was also in charge of the supplies for the end of the world to keep the school running. . No really. You are lucky you have not gotten to the ditto supplies yet. Ah, yes, purple ink and smell. Bring Flylady and all will be well. love and hugs to you. PS there is real chalk in the orchestra room, even though there is a white board…….
There’s a “printer cartridge” in the back that I swear hasn’t moved in ten years. I’m afraid if I open it I’ll find a little man ready to chisel documents on stones!
AHHH…. the little man who’s son will invent a round stone? Just be sure to tell him to pick up his fig leaves. He really forgets these unless he is told to do this. You are getting my creativity moving again.