Gaijin Jump

By Craig Chapin. First published in January 1995.

Most Gaijin Jump strips deal with my life in Japan. This one, however, recounts an event that took place in the U.S.

My boss, Sharon Morris, asked me to fax something. The fax machine was on a different floor. I knew roughly where it was but not exactly where, so I went downstairs to try to find it. When I got there, I noticed something posted above the shredder and thought that it might be related to faxing, so I stopped to read it. As I absent-mindedly read the instructions posted on the wall, I momentarily forgot that I hadn’t yet found the fax machine. There I stood with the important document poised just above the mouth of the shredder.

At that moment, Kristin Lindholm appeared. Kristin worked in the same office and had overheard my instructions from the boss. Her first thought was that I had mistaken the shredder for the fax machine and that I was about to shred the document. And given my distracted state of mind, she might have been right.

Her reaction was a bit more direct and a little less impish than what I put in the comic strip. Nor did the document actually reach the mouth of the shredder. We’ll call those discrepancies artistic license.