For fourteen agonizing minutes on Tuesday morning, all vehicle registrations ground to a halt as a state employee methodically peeled the factory plastic from a new Swingline stapler. Witnesses report the clerk maintained dead-eyed contact with the crowd while sliding a letter opener under the cardboard flap.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — For fourteen agonizing minutes on Tuesday morning, all vehicle registration and licensing operations at the regional Department of Motor Vehicles ground to a complete halt as a senior clerk deliberately unsealed a fresh stapler with chilling, ceremonial slowness.
Witnesses in the packed waiting room watched in paralyzed silence as the clerk, identified by her window placard only as "Doris," paused mid-transaction to retrieve a cardboard box from her lower desk drawer. According to dozens of onlookers, Doris maintained unbroken, dead-eyed eye contact with the man standing at her counter while using a government-issued letter opener to score the factory seal at a rate of roughly one millimeter per second.
The integration of a new fastening device into the workstation is a highly regulated procedure. If we rush the removal of the cardboard retaining clips, the public might start believing they are entitled to rapid service, which destabilizes the entire psychological ecosystem of the waiting area.
The tension in the room reportedly peaked when Doris removed the device from its plastic sleeve, pausing for three full minutes to inspect the Swingline 747's heavy chrome finish under the fluorescent lights. Several individuals holding tickets in the high 400s openly wept as she slowly popped the top carriage, blew a speck of nonexistent dust from the spring mechanism, and began loading a single strip of standard staples with the deliberate care of a sniper assembling a rifle.
At press time, the crowd let out a collective gasp as Doris slowly depressed the stapler in the empty air to test the mechanism, before reaching back into her drawer to retrieve a freshly shrink-wrapped box of medium-point blue ballpoint pens.