Bobbie J. Serensky: File Clerk Extraordinaire

During my college years, I worked as a file clerk for a steel company.  In the course of those four years of employment, I often struggled with the seeming futility of my position.  Each day, I filed hundreds of papers:  I could sort, alphabetize, and file more efficiently than any other file clerk before me.  At least, so my superiors said.  But as my nimble paws quickly mauled their way through the mounds of paperwork, I could not help but to ponder the ultimate worth of my work.  Sure, other workers could quickly find paperwork, but they could have just as easily looked the information up on their computers.  It seemed to me, though, that they resisted this newfangled technology.  As such, I often thought about teaching them a lesson:  What would happen if I threw out all the paperwork?  Could they still do their jobs?  Could the company still survive?  Did the success of this company actually rest on my shoulders?  These thoughts raced through my brain as I sat on a stool much like the one Ignatius uses.  Hopefully, though, I did not look "like an eggplant balanced atop a thumbtack" (84).  But in my defense, those step stools do not provide much surface area.  Ultimately, although I did have wild fantasies of "pick[ing] up the stack of still unfiled material, and thr[owing] it into the wastebasket," I never did (89).  I just did not have it in me to buck the system and potentially destroy the company.  Overall, I came to see that perhaps the job had a tinge of futility, but in the end, it taught me resilience and dedication.  Most importantly, though, it also afforded me time to create amazingly impressive pieces of writing that I constructed in my head while filing.  As many of your blogs suggested, it seems that we do all have a bit Ignatius J. Reilly we can identify with.