I’d say my spilling average is about as low as most people. Maybe 1 major spill every 3 months and 1 minor spill every 2 weeks. Even though there are only 2 categories of spills, spill math can be kind of difficult. For instance, if I sit down with a bowl of cereal and it slips out of my hand and covers me with soggy cereal, is that a major spill or a minor spill. The answer depends on many factors which involve many questions. What am I wearing? Do I have to be anywhere soon? Are we low on paper towels or stocked? Carpet or wood floor? Dogs nearby? Milk/cereal ratio? Shirt absorbtion? Embarrasment factor—Anyone around? I have been in this scenario multiple times and, depending on these factors, they’ve been both major and minor spills.

My major spill of the last 3 months involved not tightening the lid on a carton of liquid laundry detergent enough while leaving it on its side overnight. I don’t remember a spill of any kind in January but yesterday and today, I have spilled no less than 3 times. And if you add in the embarrassment factor mentioned above of all these being work spills, they could all be put into the “major” category. When you put all this together, it looks like I am not allowed to spill again until 2010.

First, I’m at my co-workers desk yesterday while she is on break searching for certain papers when I knock over her mug of iced tea. I am a really talented spiller so I managed to avoid any essential paperwork or electronics and keep the pool contained around the mouse pad, which absorbed much of it. I desperately hurried to get it cleaned up before she got back, which I actually managed to do, but there was no hiding the soaked mouse pad. Busted!

Today, I am grabbing my yummy (and healthy) lunch of minestrone soup out of the fridge and as I’m carrying it back to my desk partly by the tupperware lid (terrible way to carry something), it comes plopping off and the soup goes all over the very center of the carpeted aisle. After scraping as much as I could into the garbage, the remainder sat right where every person in the room walks past it probably a dozen times per day looking like fresh puke. Apparently the maintenance crew had better things to do than MAINTAIN a clean work environment because they didn’t show up for their work order all day.

Oh and I wasn’t done yet… I still hadn’t even touched my own desk yet. So after getting my replacement lunch and a coke from the cafeteria, I promptly gave the bottle a nice elbowing and emptied a quarter of it over my desk with that nice loud carbonation fiz sound that can be heard several cubicles away. It’s just a good thing that I am an amazingly talented spiller and somehow the pool of sticky soda literally stopped millimeters short of my important paperwork. Amazingly no one seemed to notice this last one so people only think I’m really clumsy rather than incredibly clumsy.