On Thursday we had a crisis with the FAX machine. Two of the brokers, Rose and Barbara, have entered into a partnership. Rose is tall, good-looking, lean and blonde, with a sweet disposition. Barbara is tall, good-looking lean and dark, with a perpetually flinty expression at odds with hter taste for filmy, pastel colored clothing. When they have disagreements Rose descends into barely concealed teariness while Barbara just gets tightlipped. Barbara usually prevails.

That day they discovered, a few minutes before five, an important FAX that had lain in the FAX room for two hours. Rose was visibly upset, and while she hastened to assure me she didn’t hold me personally responsible, she made it plain she considered it a serious error by the comroom as a whole. (When Rose and Barbara have problewms with the comroom — which is often — it’s always Rose who deals with us, with a worried look that makes me imagine an enraged Barbara sitting on her head.)

My feelings were mixed. On the one hand they should have been given the FAX within a half-hour of its arrival and they both had good reason to be upset. On the other hand, the FAX room is open and convenient to everyone, and if they were expecting an important message they should have occasionally checked for themselves.

And, on yet another hand, I’ve begun feeling a mulish, ears-back resentment the minute I’m asked to do things outside of my already time-consuming computer work. Checking the FAXes is not part of my job description.

I went upstairs to warn the comroom manager, Annie, that Rose and Barbara were going to complain about us. We shook our heads over the FAX machines and Annie said they should be checked every ten minutes — something I thought (but did not say) was unlikely to happen unless we hired someone fulltime to replace Ellie. We can’t be expected, in the midst of our other projects, to jump up every ten minutes and check the FAX machines in another room.

Then I made a mistake. I jokingly suggested we set up an alarm clock to go off every ten minutes in the comroom. Annie’s eyes lit up.

Friday morning she brought in her kitchen timer and placed it on a shelf in the comroom where it went off, more or less, every ten minutes. It doesn’t always work. Such timers are not meant to be rewound every ten minutes. Every time it buzzed I jumped, Lara sighed heavily and Kay gritted his teeth. Annie was delighted and kept coming in to see if it was ticking away. We’ll see how long this lasts.