One Only.
September 12, 2005 @ 02:07 PMIt’s amazing the little things that give you pause. Today, just before leaving work for the last time, I turned in my timecard. An ordinary action so I thought, one that I’ve done exactly 119 times before. But this time was different. Reaching in to my time card file, I discovered I had one left.
Five years ago I was handed one time sheet. One only. Thinking ahead (something I was not known for at the time), I realized I would soon need another time card, and another, and another. So, I photocopied this time card – 5 or 10 copies maybe. And for five years, every time I found myself down to one time card, I made copies of it for later use. But today for the first time, I didn’t. I just used it.
There’s more to the story, though… See, as part of that forethought mentioned earlier, I realized I surely couldn’t get by for very long if I was making copies of copies of copies. The quality would degrade drastically everytime I made a copy. So I set the original in the back of the file. Working from the front to the back, the last time card I ever had left was the original to photocopy. It made great sense and worked well.
But now you can see why this time was different. Today’s time card, my last one at this company, was in fact the original one I was given. After 119 photocopies, I finally turned in my last time card—and it turned out to be my first one.