I always wonder whether I should draw a line between my desire for perfect order and the chaos that dominates the reality I share with others. The Ying and Yang of this relationship often manifests itself when I am placed in situations involving second parties whom I cannot control. When and where should you draw the line? I guess it’s true what they say: “You must pick and choose your battles”.

So, I have this colleague, a very nice Vietnamese lady who speaks English with a thick accent - she rolls her R’s with a “w” and drops the S’s on plural words and wanders around the office trolling for supplies and other knick knacks. Despite her pleasant appearance and personality, she has trouble expressing and understanding English and it tests my patience whenever I need to explain a programming concept or algorithm to her. If Time is my devil and my nemesis, I imagine that the English language is hers. And so, I sense we must limit our interaction to ten minute intervals in order to keep both of our devils at bay…any more than that and the frustration would reach a boiling point.

We have sat in the same cubicles, about five yards apart from each other for the last eight years. The stark contrast in our work styles and the physical appearance of our cubicles accurately reflect the present state of our lives. She maintains a crispy clean alter to her ten year old little girl, festooned with hand painted childhood scenes and photographs of her idealistic family life. She also has a tendency to covet personal effects and to take possession of discarded cardboard boxes or other office supplies and maintains a growing collection of pens, staplers and other obscure things.

I keep my desk pretty much like a pig sty. The growing stack of work and personal documents tattooed with coffee cup rings haphazardly intermix with paper napkins, random toothpicks and sticky notes that I have accumulated since 1998. Within this menagerie of office paraphernalia I have only two writing instruments - two pens, one with black ink and one with red ink. These two pens I have had in my possession for the last eight years. One of these solitary pens has a detachable cap…a red cap, with a tapered sharp edge. One cannot easily find this particular style of pen cap in our office supply cabinet.

On the most recent “Please help me with this” request from my colleague, I found myself doing her work at my desk while she sat next to me and pointed at the screen (touching my screen) using the red pen cap she had casually picked up from my desk.

COLLEAGUE: “Now, it say ‘working closely with the leadership teams of the former’…w-o-r-k-i-n-g…c-l-o-s-e-l-y…”

ME: (typing) “Please, I can type faster if you don’t spell or say the words while I type”.

Over the years, I have developed certain routines in every aspect of my life and it just so happens that this little red pen cap has become an important part of my ear cleaning routine (works much better than a Q-Tip). So, you can imagine my ire when my colleague walked off with my red pen cap. God only knows what sort of designs she had for my little red pen cap, maybe her daughter needed it for some school project; maybe she had a red pen at home without a cap; maybe she wanted to add to her growing collection of pen caps; but, maybe, just maybe, she had gotten wise to the superior cleaning properties that pen caps enjoy over Q-Tips and she planned to use the little red pen cap for her own ear cleaning needs…I had to act.

I gave her an hour to see the error in her ways and an opportunity for redemption, but, alas this did not happen. And so, I found myself approaching her regarding the little red pen cap before she could taint it with her ear and she returned it without incident. For some reason, I chose to “fight this battle” over such a silly little thing. Why? Have I worked here too long and am I set in my habits? Perhaps, I needed to defend an encroachment on my personal space, or maybe, I simply just did not want to go through the time and hassle of finding another “little pen cap”, after all, I have other more pressing issues to fight for against Time.