I Get Blamed for Everything I Do

I may as well start off with how I came to start the fire at work.

We had a large direct-mail job that really stretched us to our limits in terms of time and people available to run these postcards

 through the address imprinter and sorted into their proper USPS-approved tubs. Most of the staff would run into the "mail room" when they had a minute or two to try to keep the job going.

I had some free time. I volunteered to help and was greeted warmly by Stephen, who was the father of this job. My position in this mailing operation is always to be the feeder of of the postcards, newsletters, whatever. The delivery end of the equipment, after they go across a

 conveyor, requires a certain set of coordination skills that do not now, nor have I ever possessed. The "snatch & grab" method off emptying the delivery tray doesn't work for me.

So, here I am, faithfully feeding the postcards into their holding bin, when I realize that the computer right next to me is hooked to the internet. The computer's main job is to get the mailing lists to the addressing equipment, but it's sitting there silently, taunting me. I'm standing mindlessly in this windowless room. Key point: Stephen now leaves the room to take a phone call.

Now, I quit paying attention to the delivery end a long time ago. It's not my responsibility and I'm busy reading about a grandma that got a DUI three days in a row because, as she said, "I'm not finished with the box of wine in the trunk yet." I leave the room for a few seconds. Come back and see the smoke billowing out from the mailin

g equipment. Round the corner to where the conveyor is only to find 3- to 4-inch flames under the heat lamp that drying the ink as the postcards go whizzing by.

"Stephen, fire!" This is when it turns into "Abbott & Costello Mail Some Postcards."

I turn off the heat lamp, flip it up and the flames immediately go out. Here comes Stephen, racing in to save the day. In his mad dash, he knocks over 5 or 6 full mailing tubs right outside the door. Seven or eight postcards are burned, scorched and otherwise harmed. Turns out the delivery end piled up so high that it went over the conveyor, causing the postcards to pile up, immobile, on the conveyor. A heat lamp two inches over a piece of paper will cause combustion, as I found out. It will also cause quite a bit of smoke that you'll have to try to get out of the building with a bunch of fans.

Side note: The headline, "I Get Blamed for Everything I Do," is from an obscure Chuck Jones cartoon called "Boyhood Daze" and stars a great little kid named Ralph Phillips. He says that line as he's being sent to his room for yet another typical screw-up, then begins daydreaming about all the things he wants to do and be someday.