The Bin Which Belongeth to Brenda.

Apologies to old chums who have heard this before, but I was reminded today of a classic incident from my flukey youth.
I was trying to get something faxed over to me this morning from a client and was told that the document I wanted was in the office but the woman "with clearance" to do the faxing was on a day off. Clearance!! I kid you not! "Couldn't YOU just pop it on the machine for me chucklebunny?" I asked, not unreasonably I thought. "No, sorry. Michelle is the only one who can send external faxes. I'd be in terrible trouble if I did it," came the reply. "Deportation?" I enquired. "A firing squad, perhaps? Being strung up in the executive washroom by your gonads with piano wire? Forget it. Just tell Michelle that I tried, God knows I tried."
I put the phone down and began laughing maniacally and that's when I was reminded of the first job I ever had. I say first but it was really the first "proper", full-time, permanent job I had which didn't involve mixing cement, barrowing bricks, pumping gas or erecting fences. My job? I was a civil servant. Yes, Pither, scourge of The System, Mr Keep-The-Red-Flag-Flying, began his income-declared life as a humble Government drone.
I lasted just three months before my antics and attitude culminated in a mutual agreement never to dorken the darkstep of the Civil Service again, but in that time I discovered one important thing - exactly what I wanted chiseled on my headstone when I die.
It came about one day when my task for the alloted eight hours was to sift through a pile of forms. In short, if a form had a certain number on it went on a new pile, if it had another number it went on a different new pile and if it had a certain third number it had to go in the bin. I always knew my degree would come in handy.
I had been at this orgasm-inducing task for two hours when I realised that I was straining my back reaching over behind me to put the forms to be discarded in THE bin under a colleague's desk. I am a fairly bright lad. I have a rough grasp of ergonomics. Why don't I move the bin so it is under MY desk and then I won't have to strain my back, I thought?
The second I did that a little voice piped up. "That's Brenda's bin." "Oh, I know," I said, somewhat bemused, "but I haven't got a bin and Brenda's off sick today." "That's Brenda's bin," came the pre-programmed, robotic reply. "Yes, but you see, if I have her bin here it makes the job easier. I will put it back at the end of the day. Promise. I swear on everything holy, on my life. Please God, trust me. I am a man of honour." "That's Brenda's bin."
That's when it dawned on me. I had trangressed the unwritten law. It WAS Brenda's bin, the bin she had obviously sweated blood for, undergone thirty years of mind-bleaching toil for, brought up four children for and endured a prolapse in office. Another five years and she would be entitled to her own Post-It notes, a further two years on top of that until she was entitled to write her name on her own stapler and then, after fifty years loyal service, the ultimate. Valhalla! The Holy Grail! - a peg on the office coat stand! That is the career path in the Civil Service, what you have to look forward to, the endless pursuit of excitement.
It was shortly after that - two days as I recall - that I walked out for good, laughing all the way to the pub. I have already told my nearest and dearest that when I'm eventually shot by the authorities or I keel over into my Senatogen I want my headstone inscribed simply "Brenda's Bin."
I suppose it's jobsworths who have to go to Grantham but I want Brenda kept out - she is far too precious for such a town and, besides, another two weeks by my reckoning and she's entitled to a bed in the Happy Home For Brain-Wiped Civil Servants.
POSTSCRIPT: Sadly, I have to report that Brenda resembled the picture of the quadrapedal, morally casual young girl at the head of this post about as much as I resemble George Clooney. Brenda, from memory, had a specific mass approaching that of a black hole and if beauty is skin deep she was inside out!