Lickety Spit

My boss refuses to stop licking envelopes and its driving me crazy. Let me explain. I purchased new 9x12 envelopes for books that we send out regularly. The last time I ordered these envelopes we bought a more expensive kind. Trying to save money I went cheap. The envelopes themselves were fine but I didn't realize that they were not self-sealing but the kind you had to wet in order to seal them. With the last kind you pulled a strip revealing a sticky strip and then all you had to do was push the sides together. So to fix this problem I bought some envelope sealer which is basically a spongy glue stick that both wets the sealer and puts some more glue on the surface. Who wants to lick a bunch of envelopes closed everyday, right? So this seemed to be working ok for everybody in the office until one day I was sitting in my boss's office talking to her about something while she was preparing a package in one of these envelopes. I watched as she put the book in the envelope, licked the thing closed with multiple waggings of her tongue and then pulled out a roll of packing tape, cut it to the appropriate size with scissors and then applying the tape haphazardly to the end of the previously molested envelope. After I witnessed this I asked her, "What are you doing?" She said that she was sending a book off to so-and-so to which I countered, "No, why are you doing that to that envelope?" To which she replied, "I just want to make sure the book doesn't come out in the mail." So I tell her to wait just a minute and I go and get her one of the handy spongy glue stick envelope sealers that I had purchased for just this purpose. As she prepared her next package I showed her how to use the glue stick on it and she agreed that was a better idea. Problem solved right? Well, perhaps not.

A few days later I am in her office again and witness the same envelope molesting as before except that this time after she licked the envelope thoroughly she applied the wet glue stick to the package as well. (At least we had gotten rid of the excessive tape step.) So I asked again, "What are you doing?" She replied that she was using the glue that I had given her. So I say, "Well yeah but the glue replaces the need to use your tongue. See the glue wets the sealer the same as your spit does so you don't have to lick them anymore." She goes, "I don't mind licking them." And I say, "But that's just gross! And now your doing the same step twice for no reason." So I try to explain again the idea of wetness being the same whether it comes from spit or from the glue stick but that argument was to no avail. A co-worker had come into her office to discuss something and I presented my argument just to make sure I wasn't the crazy one. My co-worker agreed and tried to explain the same thing I had just explained but again, it was useless. So now each package that is sent from her is sealed with a loving french kiss as well as the glue stick. (By the way she has her own glue stick that only she uses.)

One would think that would be the only envelope sealing discussion a person would have within a weeks time, but no, that wasn't the case. A few days later I was doing something in our mailroom when another co-worker of mine, who is a bit of a germaphobe, came in and asks if there is a way to seal an envelope. (This was in regards to a regular letter sized envelope.) I told him about the spongy envelope sealers that I had gotten and I also suggested that he could just lick it too. (It was just one.) Then he says, "Well, I just don't want the person who receives it to think that I licked it." I looked at him for a moment probably not hiding my confusion very well before I said, "What???" He explained that he just didn't want the receiver to be grossed out thinking that he had licked it closed. I still had the confused look on my face as I turned around and grabbed his paycheck out of his mailbox and held it up saying, "Who do you think licks these every two weeks?" He looked at me with horror. (I really don't lick them myself but it illustrated my point.) I told him that I didn't think many people thought about how the envelope they just opened was sealed but that the envelope sealer was available for him to use whenever he needed it. Also that he should probably never open any packages that were sent to him by our boss without wearing gloves.