The empty Triscuit box on the carpet and the condition of the desktop told Fred that Gina had taken her lunch in his office again. She always ate those tasteless shredded wheat excuses for crackers with her tomato soup, which she never failed to fill to brimming. Over filled, judging from the red stains on the blotter pad.
But as much as he wanted to call her in to give her the drubbing she deserved, there was no time. In less than five minutes Henry Jergins would be leaning across the desk, in Fred's face about the pump adaptor. It had been giving the designers fits for weeks and was the only thing holding up production.
Fred kicked the cracker box under the desk, took the prototype from his sample case and put it on a yellow pad, which he strategically placed to cover the soup stains. If Jergins saw the stains he would come to the erroneous conclusion that Fred had painted the mounting flange himself. The flange wasn't blue as ordered, but had been painted orange instead. Fred fussed with the placement of the adaptor on the pad. Maybe the yellow paper would compliment the orange and --
Jergins was actually smiling when he came in, an expression unfamiliar with the topography of his face. But then he spied the adaptor and his expression passed through disbelief, horror, incredulity and finally settled into anger. To accompany the end result, his face turned the most marvelous color of cherry red. Fortunately, when Henry Jergins got that mad, he found it difficult to say very much. He did, however, manage to let Fred know, along with much airborne saliva, that he could do several impossible things with the adaptor, and he could do them in the privacy of his apartment for the rest of his life.
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Ink
peanuts
sycamore
lint
operator