Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

I can never give any of them what they really want: I can’t fix a marriage, and I can’t undo a lie, and I can’t raise the dead. And I can never tell them, because they think they just want answers.

I worked as an office administrator for a long time, in office management and business operations. A huge part of that job – the part nobody tells you about – is the role of receiving other peoples’ emotional baggage. People come and freak out at you about sticky notes, because their marriage is in trouble and they don’t know how to fix it. They want solutions to solvable problems, and they want those solutions to somehow repair the broken parts of their lives that feel too hard to solve. And you can’t say “hey, I know you want pink sticky notes and I’ll get them for you as fast as I can, but can you please just go have that fight with your wife so you can stop yelling at me?”