Magic tricks of the clerks

I have discussed various coping mechanisms clerks use to navigate the despair strewn path of work life (examples here, here, and here), but today's list concerns itself with a more abstruse and amazing branch of clerk talents. For those non clerks among my readers I doubt you have ever before been swayed by my carnival musings on clerk life so as to give it all up and become a clerk. I don't blame you. But I am finally here to turn your head. Clerking, it turns out, is one of the very, very few paths out of muggledom that exists on the planet. Many people who have shown no indication whatsoever of supernatural talents find, after as little as three months of clerking, that they are now capable of strange feats that baffle those around them and cannot be explained by science.

Here is a short list of magical abilities I have personally witnessed and occasionally even performed at my Library:

1. Taking a cumulative half hour of break time, usually divided into two 15 minute segments, and instead dividing it into seven 15 minute segments.

2. The ability to work at the front desk for two hours with out ever actually going to the front desk.

3. The ability to complain about yourself by using another person's name.

4. The power to prove that the proverbial half full glass is actually only 47 percent full.

5.  The miraculous break room power to eat things that can normally not be eaten.

6. The ability to achieve religious-like transcendental ecstasies through things like a co-worker's sick day, free bagels and broken elevators.

7. The power to pass a year merely by blinking one's eyes.