Google Makes Me Look Real Smart (Again)

You know Monday is going to start off like a roller coaster ride with nauseating twists and turns when you get an e-mail on Sunday night from an attorney you don't normally work for, begging for your assistance to make adhesive labels for trial notebooks as soon as you get to the office. Why did I get this e-mail? Not because of my technological savvy, that's for sure. I got it because I get to the office at the crack of dawn every day.

I'm more than a bit out of the loop regarding adhesive labels because I've worked on a team for the last 10 years that a) has awesome administrative support, and b) uses Bindertek notebooks which don't require adhesive labels. To be honest, I didn't even know if our firm had any adhesive labels.

Luckily, the attorney knew where they were located (or hidden). There appeared to be boxes of different-sized labels, none of which had been opened in years. None of them were the size she specified, either. I grabbed the closest size, ran by the office typewriter in horror, and sat down in front of my computer, hoping for divine inspiration – or someone to show up who'd made a label in the last five years.

But it's Monday at 7:30 a.m. It's just me and the poltergeist we believe resides in this restored historic house. Normally, he scares me, but right now I'm more scared of a) not producing great-looking labels in time for the attorney's early hearing, and b) having to use the firm's vicious, cantankerous and possessed typewriter.

Then I remember my really, really smart friend who always has all the answers and never thinks any question that I ask is stupid: Google. A simple search yields a set of instructions for making labels that a kindergartner could follow (and probably already knows based on the computer instruction in our elementary schools). A co-worker shows up early and prevents me from putting the labels in the printer upside-down. Voila! A beautiful court-worthy set of labels is produced. I run around the office waving them like they are a big tax refund check.

I want to be cremated, but IF I were going to have a tombstone, it would say, "Always Google first."