3.
Three years ago.

After my third mandatory Foreign Field Rotation I got transferred home to Cleveland.
Mom was having drinking problems and I needed to be nearby.

So I set up shop in the Cleveland Branch. Nothing about it looks covert, high-tech, or
lethal. The sign on the door says we are the Federal Print Document Control. We even
have some people who actually work on printed matter from the Farm Bureau about
things like the use of Fipronil on Fire Ant mounds.

The women (it’s mostly women) who work in the printing portion of the office are in
a kind of strange gray area. They have to have clearance, but they’re not operatives. I
think some of them are washouts. Lots of people here have clearance who aren’t
operatives. The administrative staff. Even Dwayne has to have clearance. I like
Dwayne. Everyone I work with is very smart, very intense, hi-I’m-just-a-nice-guy-who-
happens-to-know-seven-ways-to-kill-a-man-with-a-stick-of-chewing gum kind of intense.

And then there’s Dwayne in his dickies, fifty-something, replacing the toilet paper,
offering to meet me for a beer and show me how a mature man is way more fun than
those callow kids my age. He drives me nuts, but in such a normal way, I almost like it
when he comes over and sits on the edge of my desk and says, “What’s shaking,
beautiful?” He carries around this twenty-sided die and he fiddles with it all the time.
Takes it out of his pocket and spins it. Apparently he was into D&D when he was a kid.
Yikes.

When I first start at The Office, Dwayne is trying to patent an invention that tells you
where your TV remote is when you can’t find it. He thinks he’ll be a billionaire. He
knows he’s meant for bigger things than maintenance. “Listen, hotshots,” he says, “you
guys are dedicated to a cause and all that, but me, I’m an entrepreneur.” He explains to
me a lot about the entrepreneurial view of the world, how the entrepreneur sees life as a
series of opportunities.

Wonder how that patent is coming.

4 -> made up of only the same four letters, repeated.

3.
Three years ago.

After my third mandatory Foreign Field Rotation I got transferred home to Cleveland.
Mom was having drinking problems and I needed to be nearby.

So I set up shop in the Cleveland Branch. Nothing about it looks covert, high-tech, or
lethal. The sign on the door says we are the Federal Print Document Control. We even
have some people who actually work on printed matter from the Farm Bureau about
things like the use of Fipronil on Fire Ant mounds.

The women (it’s mostly women) who work in the printing portion of the office are in
a kind of strange gray area. They have to have clearance, but they’re not operatives. I
think some of them are washouts. Lots of people here have clearance who aren’t
operatives. The administrative staff. Even Dwayne has to have clearance. I like
Dwayne. Everyone I work with is very smart, very intense, hi-I’m-just-a-nice-guy-who-
happens-to-know-seven-ways-to-kill-a-man-with-a-stick-of-chewing gum kind of intense.

And then there’s Dwayne in his dickies, fifty-something, replacing the toilet paper,
offering to meet me for a beer and show me how a mature man is way more fun than
those callow kids my age. He drives me nuts, but in such a normal way, I almost like it
when he comes over and sits on the edge of my desk and says, “What’s shaking,
beautiful?” He carries around this twenty-sided die and he fiddles with it all the time.
Takes it out of his pocket and spins it. Apparently he was into D&D when he was a kid.
Yikes.

When I first start at The Office, Dwayne is trying to patent an invention that tells you
where your TV remote is when you can’t find it. He thinks he’ll be a billionaire. He
knows he’s meant for bigger things than maintenance. “Listen, hotshots,” he says, “you
guys are dedicated to a cause and all that, but me, I’m an entrepreneur.” He explains to
me a lot about the entrepreneurial view of the world, how the entrepreneur sees life as a
series of opportunities.

Wonder how that patent is coming.

4 -> made up of only the same four letters, repeated.