So we’ve entered the silly hour at work (between 4 and 5, when there’s nothing much left to do, but you can’t quite go home yet), and I’ve already read all my daily sites, posted some inane tripe in the forum, and am generally just looking for ways to kill the last hour of the day, when I spy something I haven’t really noticed before:

My white out dispenser.

It’s one of these new fangled white out tape dispensers, where you just press the applicator down and roll it across your mistake and out comes this nice white tape which you can write on right away without it waiting to dry. Pretty cool stuff.

The mechanism itself is conveniently encased in clear plastic, so any inquiring minds can look inside and see how it works. It’s basically one reel of white out tape on a plastic backing that comes out of the dispenser onto an applicator, where the white stuff gets stuck to your paper. The clear plastic backing gets sucked back into the case onto another reel. A couple cogs and gears keep everything in sync.

Here’s the important part. This is the bit where my inquiring mind wanders off and the moron takes over. Even though I can see all the parts, can see what they do, and can see exactly how everything works…… I still feel the need to take the damn thing apart.

Need isn’t the right word. Compulsion might be a little closer.

What a god damned mess. Turns out the only thing holding the tape on to those reels was the internal tension, which evaporated as soon as I pulled off the cover. Rewinding them was complicated by the fact that the part with the white out still on was sticky, and the part without it was incredibly slippery.

———————-
Me: -swearing silently to myself, sitting in a small pile of tape-

My Boss: Uhm….. Are we giving you enough to do?

Me: Of course! How… how could you even ask that!?
———————–

So I get all the tape back on eventually, gingerly set the reels back on their spindles, thread the stuff through the applicator, and snap the cover back in place. As I’m slowly taking up the tension, the tape breaks.

Fuck.

Cover off. Scotch tape out. Splice tape. Begin arduous rewinding process. Again. Reassemble all the parts gingerly. Again. Cover on.

An audible sigh of relief is heard. It looks good. Everything’s back in place, the tension’s up, the tape repair’s holding, the white stuff is cued up in the applicator. Let’s just test it.

Snap.

The applicator broke. I think I had it in backwards.

Fuck.

But by then it was 5:00. Into the trash goes another afternoon.