Tuesday, 4/27/10 - Please, Don't Leave Me!

Please, don't leave me.
Stay.
Don't go.
Please...

These words are not mine. They belong to a woman I work with.

She has not spoken these words aloud in the office but I know she thinks them.

I am concerned about her. She has a problem and it is affecting her and the rest of my girls.

I call them "my girls" because we are like family. We all get along well and there is nothing we wouldn't do for one another.

Sure, they report to me but I try to be their friend and not their boss. I really do care about each of them and I feel responsible for them. I want to help them both in the office and in their personal lives.

I want them to feel like they can trust me.

My problem is that I am not sure which of my girls is so troubled.

You probably want to know how I know that there is a problem if I don't even know who has it. When you know people as well as I do it's easy to see how they manifest their problems.

This time it is staples!



There are staples in every document. And not just one staple, sometimes there are six or seven staples crowded together on the edge of a page.

Lately, I have been finding two and three staples in single sheets of paper.



All I can think is that one of my girls had been traumatized by the loss of someone close to her and this is her way of expressing her fears. Maybe it was the death of a parent when she was a child. Or maybe it was rejection from a boyfriend during adolescence. Or a divorce - it could have been her parents' divorce or possibly her own. It could be anything but it is being neurotically expressed through excessive stapling.

I noticed this several months ago and have been listening for anyone using the electric stapler in copier room. When I hear it ka-thunk more than once I casually walk that way and listen for further stapling. So far, I have only found people doing routine stapling. Nothing out of the ordinary.

From the way the staples are arranged, I don't suspect that my girl is impaling the documents with the sharp tines of the staple or using force to hammer them in. No, I believe that she is gently and almost lovingly pushing the staples into the pages. She is probably chastising them and apologizing at the same time, "If you would just stay, I wouldn't have to punish you like this. It's not my fault. You make me do this to you."

Sometimes the staples are all in one corner. Other times they are arranged down one side, or across the top or bottom.

Sometimes they are spread evenly around the edges. And still other times they are haphazardly punched any which way on the pages.

I have also noticed what I can only refer to as an aggregated arrangement where the first page gets one staple then, right next to that staple is another one that affixes the second page and next to that a third staple that affixes the third page. Each additional page gets another staple - right next to the previous one.

What is most troubling is that in addition to staples elsewhere on the page, there is often one, and only one, directly in the center. If I had to guess, I would say that this one extra staple is, in her mind, affixing the heart so that it cannot leave her.

It is sad.

I know that she is hurting inside and I want to help her. I want to tell her that it is ok to let someone go.

I want to tell her that love is not holding on to someone.

Love is letting go.



At the same time that our staple usage has been increasing, our tape usage has been decreasing.

I wonder if one of my other girls is having a problem with commitment...

They are my girls and I care about them.