Coming back into the office after a week’s hiatus always means about an hour of catching up on the physical mail, of which there is still a surprising volume considering how we’re supposed to be living in the Jetsonian “paperless office”. Most pieces of mail are invitations to training seminars (e.g., Maximizing Your Best Asset: Healthy Human Capital, which includes Ken Blanchard, Chief Spiritual Officer of the The Ken Blanchard Companies, publisher of The One Minute Manager, certainly one of the least healthy management techniques of the past few decades), exhortations to sign up for one more free trade journal, a stack of the trade rags themselves, pleas from fund raisers, and Fortune magazine (my third favorite business publication, behind The Wall Street Journal, whose headlines I barely get to scan every day, and Fast Company, which is, as a former co-worker dubbed it, “the happy magazine”, although I let my subscription lapse, so perhaps that explains my general crankiness lately.).

Today there was also a small brown cardboard box waiting for me. Disproportionately heavy, I would have been scared that the Unabomber had spawned an offspring if I hadn’t seen the return address bearing the name of a woman I work with. An award, I mused? A gift from last week’s meeting that I forgot to cram into my rerouted suitcase? Petrified wood?

When some white powder spilled out as I slit the tape that bound the box, I had a moment of semi-panic. Then I wondered if I’d be on the 6:00 news. I cautiously unwrapped the contents – a solid block of a white substance. Enough drugs to retire to the coast of northern California? Unfortunately not. I am now the proud owner of a Morton’s PLAIN SALT BRICK – “for all classes of cattle, sheep and horses” – “Keep away from children - for animal feeding only”. (The explanation around receiving this is long, complicated and incriminating – I have no desire to be “dooced” – but let’s just say that it involves taking things with a grain of salt.) Too bad it didn’t mention swine or weasels on the label – there are any number of humans who fit those categories that would benefit from the insertion of this brick.