it's a hard knock life

Three…the answer is three. It took my two friends and I three hours to put together one of those ready-to-assemble desks with the pre-drilled holes.

I should be embarrassed about this. I should be too ashamed to share this story with you. But instead I’m amused at the fact that three people, all possessing bachelor’s degrees, can exceed the approximate assembly time by a few hours.


We were in Branson, MO and staying with my friends grandparents. In an effort to be helpful we offered to assemble a new desk for Grandpa’s office. The box was unpacked and the pieces were laid out on the floor. With the 18-page instruction booklet in hand we began to piece together the desk. A project we thought would maybe take an hour.

Now some of the blame should fall on the shoulders of the person who wrote the instruction manual. A few of the steps were in a very illogical order and required us to attach a piece only to take it off later and then re-attach. Most of the blame, however, falls on us.

Over the course of our three hour ordeal we had many distractions. Of course we had to take time to tell jokes and laugh at ourselves. We had to play with the pieces and make fun of the instructions. We also had several visitors pop in to see how we were doing and take pictures of our creation in its various stages.

We were so proud of the finished product. Our blood, sweat and tears went into that desk and we called everyone into the room to look in awe at our accomplishment. All they could see, however, was the door that was on crooked, the desk drawers that didn’t shut correctly and the keyboard tray that had been screwed on backwards. No matter how hard you try you just can’t please everyone. Haha. So it took a few more minutes to make adjustments and fix our errors.

After we sat down and evaluated our work we all decided not to quit our day jobs. We’ll leave future desk assembly for the professionals.