Have You Tried That Place With The Meatballs?

I work as an office manager of a tech company. Most of the employees are programmers, so they should be good at logical thinking, right? Turns out not always. Most of the problems I have with them are caused by them not reading emails or signs around the office. However, some employees still baffle me.

On this one occasion, the office has been implementing hybrid work for a while due to a common reason since 2020. One of the programmers sends an email asking for a new monitor because her old one is acting up. That’s easy to handle, so we say yes and that she can take one home as long as she returns the broken one.

Then, she sends another email asking for “the so-called drawers we have in the office”. My team is so confused that nobody answers her email until she comes in the next day.

Me: “Hi! Are you here for the monitor?”

Colleague: “Yes. I have the old one here for you.”

Me: “Cool! Just leave it here and I’ll take care of it.”

Colleague: “Thanks!”

Me: “What about your other request? I don’t really understand it. Do you mean you want a monitor stand with space under it to act as a drawer?”

Colleague: “No. I meant the drawer we have under our desks. I have a similar desk at home but it doesn’t have a drawer and I don’t like seeing my things on the desk.”

Me: “You mean the one attached to the desks?”

Colleague: “Yes!”

Me: “Well, there are a few problems with that. One, it is installed on the desk. They were bought as a set so we don’t have any spares lying around. Two, it’s fragile and around a meter long. Is your desk even the same size?”

Colleague: “I don’t know. I thought we could just try it first.”

Me: “I’d rather not. And the third problem is that the furniture has been bought by the company taking over our building. Even if I let you take one drawer off, you need to bring it back in a month, anyway. Have you looked around online?”

Colleague: “No. I just love the drawers we have here so I thought I should ask first.”

Me: “I’m sure you can find something on [Webstore].”

Colleague: “I don’t like them. But I’ll look around.”

Me: “Okay.”

Six months later, I’m still bewildered. At least she’s not unreasonable like another colleague who demanded the kitchen never ever use cilantro (even on other people’s food, not only on hers) because she doesn’t like the taste.