Have hole-punch, will settle

For too many years I've been the victim of many a post-it note troll.

Yes, troll. Those particular ladies who are the keepers of the keys to the stationery cupboard. Said trolls have tended, in my experience, to be older females who clearly modelled themselves (at the start of their so-called careers) on the hard-faced screw guard from Prisoner. They prefer not to be involved in a specific project or through actively serving any real member of the public but instead get their gnarly nails into the head-office essentials. This strategy serves their purpose well - everyone has to grovel to them and they can pretty well make up any administrative permission form or approvals process up whenever the mood takes them.

There is also a male version of the Office Troll, and he is known (in my reality at least) at the Back Office Bore. He's about the same age as the post-it note princess but a fair bit more bitter about the management who have overlooked him. Feeling powerless to a) get the executives to change their minds and promote him; b) deal with his halitosis or c) try working harder; he finds it more rewarding to take his frustrations out on the lower links of the food chain.

People like me. People like me who, after only five days, slam their own heads in their lower filing cabinet drawers just to reassure themselves that they are still on planet earth and that some things - like searing pain - remain a reliable constant.

People like me who, whilst not claiming to be a Rhodes Scholar, are not total meat heads either. People like me who must forget that Joe from the IT help desk at a different office 35km away may indeed sound like a poly-cretinous, mono-synaptic, defective dickhead with a fetish for forms but is no doubt a really nice guy. To his family. On weekends. Away in Noosa. And we must remember our mantra when the troll asks for each post-it pad to be itemised separately: she may appear to be virgin with about as much warmth as a fishfinger but I'm sure she's a hard-working helper at her local Salvation Army shop and is loved by all neighbouring children. Before she lures them into her garden shed. Bites their heads off. And eats them!

I've found that the only way I can cope with these Losers who Lust for Little shots of Power is to suck up to them. Sad, isn't it. If you don't smile and laugh at their weak, funny-as-death jokes or smile and nod seriously when they waffle on about the forms that you should have completed instead of the one you actually completed, you'd be without:

• a functioning computer
• a chair, filing cabinet and bookshelf
• a bin that empties every night
• stationery
• air conditioning
• long distance access on the telephone
• diary access or invitations to free morning teas and lunches; and
• toilet paper.

The disappointing reality is that you will be worse off by doing what you want to do, namely:

• Getting Eunice is a headlock and choking her with her own beige cardigan sleeves
• Yelling: "GET YOURSELF A GOOD, HARD SHAG YOU WITHERED OLD WENCH!"
• Calling her bluff and hoping that her own natural stupidity will get you what you want - Um Dorothy, are you insinuating that I should be inured to tolerate such unacceptably moronic and ludicrous conditions that can only be viewed as utterly insolent to the overall mission of our corporation you minute specimen of humanity?
• Kick over her desk, shove her out of the window (with those godawful vertical drapes swinging dramatically) and steal however many fluoro markers you bloody well need.
• To Darryl, the IT Drone - GET OFF YOUR FAT ARSE BEFORE YOUR BUTT CHEEKS SUCK UP THE STOOL FOR GOOD AND TURN MY COMPUTER ON
• Slapping the top of his head rhythmically like Benny Hill used to do to the short bald bloke
• Flashing your boobs at him, announcing, "As if you've ever got your hands on anything like these' and
• Poking his eyes out with your kilometrico pen, clipping his nose shut with a bulldog clamp and threatening to paint his mouth white with liquid paper unless you're connected to the internet.

After you banish the above thoughts and actions from your mind and complete your squirmingly-awful suck up routine, just comfort yourself with this - you got your stuff and can settle into your job and move on but they still have to be themselves, day after day after day after day after day.....