It all started one morning when Larry came marching into Loraine’s cubicle.
“Lor, we’re expanding your room.”
Loraine, an overweight, brown haired, computer junkie found it hard to hide her excitement.
“It’s about time.” she answered  brightly.
“Yes, they’re coming to take away  your closets at 1600 hours today. After that time your room will look much bigger. There’s a dumpster that you can garbage over there.’
“Hey, I mean, what do I do with all my stuff?”
“Company orders. Paperless” replied Larry and left as quickly as he had appeared.
My laughter must have been pretty verbal as Brigadier Larry appeared in my office less than a minute later smirking.
“Your closets will be taken away at 1700 hours Colonel Taite. That should give you plenty of time to get rid of everything. Set an example right. Stiff upper lip and all that Jazz.” Larry’s English impersonations aren’t very good.
   I went at the task with a vengeance. After all, it would give me the excuse I needed not to answer the 247 emails waiting for me peacefully in my inbox and skip three or four boring conferences. My only concern was what to do with all the precious contents of my three closets that I had collected over the last decade. I needn’t have worried.  After a close examination of the contents of my closets, here is a list of some of what I found.
1. Enough printouts of computer programs and jcl sysouts to fill all the holes in Blackburn Lancashire.
2. 147 broken throwaway pens that I had neglected to throw away.
3. Several dozen assorted used paper coffee cups and stirrers, some still containing coffee remains.
4. One broken black keyboard with two matching mice who had lost their way looking for cheese.
5. One half eaten box of Ritz cheese crackers, not found by the mice.
6. A complete DOS manual.
7.  A full set of diskettes for the installation of Windows 3.1 (of historic value!)
8. Invaluable printouts of emails from the time when I thought it important to have a hard copy of every mail in case M.S. Outlook couldn’t be trusted  (possibly of interest to the British Museum).
9. 34 toothpicks – used
10. Four broken umbrellas.
11. Several  lists of New Year resolutions scanning the period of 1992 to 2001, none fulfilled.
12. A receipt for the dry cleaning of an Arrow shirt with blue stripes that got stained at the office Millennium party  and which I never picked up. (I wonder if they’re still in business).
13. My old school tie – also stained but beyond salvation.

Which brings me to the subject of this blog -  wow wasn’t that the longest introduction ever – emails.

I receive between a hundred and one hundred and fifty work related emails a day. Yes you got that right 150 a day and all work related, no spam. Writing this reminded me of a Mel Brook’s 2000 Year Old Man statement that he had over a thousand grandchildren and not one of them ever came to visit. In my case a get all these emails, several from people I have never met face to face, and they all get to stay in my inbox.  So I go through all these emails each and every day and then pass over a lot of the queries to the members of my team who dutifully answer them, copying my on the replies, thus creating even more traffic.  Of course anything I feel is important I keep, which means I have literately millions of stored emails.  I have set up an  ingenious archive structure wherein every email is carefully classified and saved in a relevant folder so that when, in two months time, I go looking for it, there is absolutely no chance that I will be able to find it. 
   One morning I receive  a message from the Exchange manager, not a human but a piece of computer code, I am now conversing with machines!
“Your email storage is full. Please delete all unnecessary mails before continuing.”
So I start by slowly deleting everything that is at least two years old, then for the fun of it I get rid of all my sent items and all the daily menus from nearby restaurant delivery services. Now I’m on a roll. I am deleting everything, wild horses cant stop me. I even put in some overtime on the cntl-delete. By 8 P.M. ,or 2000 hours if you are working with Larry, I have nothing left  in my inbox or my personal folders. I’ve deleted everything. I think there’s a law against doing that but hey, live dangerously I say. Now, you ask, what if someone actually asks me to find a historic mail? The answer is simple my friend. I’ll forward it to one of my workers and if they can’t find the appropriate mail I can reprimand them for not being organized (I never claimed I was a nice person to work for, did I?). So it’s too late for regrets  now, I’m free and it feels so goooood. As I leave the office I notice Pattie struggling with the dumpster by her cubicle.
“What’s up Pattie?”
“It’s this closet thing that Larry’s on to” she answers almost in tears. I think that among all the garbage in my closet that I have collected over the years I had a green and amber  mug with  crazy eyes and an elephant’s trunk that my kids gave me for my birthday four years ago. I can’t find it anywhere. I’m scared it’s in the dumpster.”
“Well I have to go  Pat. Have to meet someone. Good luck”, and I rush towards to exit without looking back.
   Next morning I come into the office fashionably late and turn on my computer with a smile.
  “You have 139 new emails” was the greeting I got. Well, who said life was perfect.

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