As I was preparing to leave work early yesterday for a meeting, my boss stopped me to ask if I used a surge protector when plugging in my work computer at home. When I explained that I did not, she said that I should borrow a spare from our office and be sure to use it, as the weather was often stormy in summer and I frequently work from home. This didn’t seem to be a particularly unreasonable request; had she asked me to do actual work or something, I would have been significantly more inconvenienced.
I didn’t see a spare surge protector lying around, however, so I asked my boss for assistance. She marched into the storage room and produced a surge protector that was roughly the equivalent to what would be needed to protect the entire continent of Asia. “Here,” she said, handing me the colossal box. “It’s a bit heavy.”
I decided at once that it was not coming home with me. First of all, I already had to carry my purse, my laptop bag, and a plastic sack full of empty Tupperware. Second, I park roughly six miles from my office. Third, I’m lazy. Were I able to claim “Carried heavy work-related object to car” on my expense report, I’d reconsider, but that’s not the case. So I made certain the coast was clear, opened my empty file cabinet, lined the bottom drawer with a company polo shirt, and dumped the surge protector inside. Then I locked the cabinet and went home, feeling confident that I had once again avoided doing the responsible thing.