Takin' Care of Business

When I was a little girl, I used to create businesses (only when I wasn't taking orders and delivering pizzas at my Barbies' Pizza Hut while fending off Ninja Turtle attacks from Bran) and make application forms on Dad's sweet IBM computer complete with a 5 1/4" floppy drive. I snagged home equity and loan application brochures from banks and filled them out because they had blank lines and it made me feel important. And it's very possible that I made some of my rintherealworld readers fill some out as well. My mom's best friend Sus used to proclaim to people at LCF that I could run a corporation in my teens. While I don't quite know about that, I will say that I have had many "careers" before my real job as a paralegal-all before I could drive: fashion designer, strict school teacher (Dad and Mom used to have to sit in desks and take my spelling tests, love it), chiropractor, tornado chaser (I watched Twister at least once a day for about a month in 4th grade), customer service representative for my fashion designing business "Fashion Club" (complete with a broken phone headset that I wore while aimlessly typing things into the ancient IBM). I had an office in Dad's office, and I used to love to go to places like Office Depot and Staples and look at office supplies. I think I had about every swirly colored gel pen on the face of planet Earth. What a dork. When people start new jobs, there are a number of tasks to be completed before one is up and running. You've got to get acquainted with where they store supplies like boxes of paperclips and staples, oodles of black, blue and red gel pens, and the FedEx envelopes, etc. You also have to personalize a few things, such as the scan/email feature on the copy machine, but before you do that, there's just one itsy bitsy thing you have to set up: the work email account. It's very legit., it's professional, it sends the message to the recipient that, "I'm not here to mess around, this is my new awesome work email address, and I want a response back ASAP! Can't you just see in the address how important my job is!" That sounds a little militant, but I think that deep down, everybody feels that way about their "work email"-it's one of the most efficient ways to take care of business. It's one thing to have a Gmail account, which is awesome (if you don't have one, you should switch), but it's a completely different situation when you have a "work" email. For instance, you know that your address is one out of ten (or 500, depending on who you work for) email addresses with the same domain name. It's exclusive, a way to be unique and belong. And we all want to be a part of something, right? I realize that this is such a trifle in the metaphysical sense of "being a part of something." I have to admit that after I had set up a "signature" for the work email that I sent my mom a test email to show off not only my new work email address, but my signature, complete with title and office name, address, phone and fax, just in case someone didn't have the resources to email me back--they can call me or send a fax, whichever they prefer. The funniest part about my "test" email is that I spent more time than I should have looking at other co-workers' signatures to see if mine was appropriate. I began to wonder what font was the best to use, or should I use dashes or periods in between the numbers for phone and fax, do I use the middle initial, etc. It was hilariously laborious, and now I feel kind of vulnerable even saying that I spent more than 5 minutes on my work email signature, but if you can't find joy in the little things in life, where else will you find it?