"Did we do something wrong?"
The missionaries had gathered around us, looking crestfallen and betrayed. My coworkers and I cringed guiltily, caught in the middle of removing the desks from their classroom. We'd spent a large portion of the morning gutting the desks, piling all of the scriptures, highlighters, manuals, and notebooks as neatly as we could on the floor. We had hoped to be finished taking the desks out before the missionaries got back from their service assignments, but it hadn't worked out that way. We were trapped.
And despite the fact that we'd spent the morning complaining about how messy these elders were, how they never listened when we asked them to stop racing chairs down the hall, and how these giant metal desks had been a nuisance ever since they'd arrived - we just felt bad when we saw how upset they were to lose their desks. Wrenched from nearly all their mortal possessions, these desks must have been the closest thing any of these missionaries had to private property. Many of them had personalized their desks with stickers and notes. And they had shown up to class to find us heartlessly dragging them away.
"What are you doing with our desks?" one Elder asked. I could have sworn his puppy dog eyes were about to start swimming with tears. "Why are you taking them away?"
I didn't know what to say. "Our boss is having all these new desks cleared out."
"But why?"
"They were never supposed to be here." It was true; the new desks had shown up randomly, and we'd been trying to figure out what to do with them for weeks. "Apparently they're supposed to go to 4M."
"But that's the building where the English-speaking missionaries study!" An Elder pushed forward through the crowd, looking furious. "They're only here for three weeks, and we're here for nine! Why should they get the nice desks?"
The wall was lined with old, tiny desks we were using to replace the new ones we'd taken out. In truth, it was quite a step down from what they were used to. "I'm sorry, Elder. It doesn't make sense to me either -"
"Now I'm going to have to stand for three hours!" another angry Elder burst out, glaring at me accusingly. "I can't sit in those old desks for more than two minutes without having to change how I'm sitting; they're so uncomfortable. It'll be too distracting, and I won't be able to learn anything. I'll have to just stand for the whole three hours of class!"
That seemed a bit extreme. "Now, listen, I'm not in charge of this. I'm just -"
"Did you peel everything off of the tops?" a Sister interrupted, looking anxious.
"What? You mean the stickers and stuff?" I asked, bemused. "No, we didn't peel any of that off. We didn't want to take the time; the custodians in 4M can take care of it." I was the one who had insisted upon this to my coworkers. After all, where were the 4M custodians now? Why weren't they helping us move all these things?
"So they're still on the desks?" the Sister asked. When I nodded, she started lifting the desks off of each other, clearly looking for her own. "I just put a lot of stuff on mine, and I'd really like to get it back. Do you see -?"
"I had a bunch of stuff on mine, too," an Elder insisted, coming toward me. There were four or five other missionaries on his heels.
"Okay, okay!" I shouted over the clamor. In my best announcer-voice, I called across the crowd, "If there was stuff taped to the top of your desk, it's still there. Help each other flip over the desks and you should be able to find yours. We've got a couple of putty knives you can use." I motioned for one of my coworkers to run and grab the putty knives from downstairs, then I started flipping over desks to help the frantic missionaries.
I was there for a long time. Missionary after missionary came to me with questions, but my answers never got any better. All of the Elders and Sisters were sad; some of them were even resignedly grateful to us for letting them take their stickers off the desks. But there were a few missionaries who were really mad at us for pulling such a dirty trick on them while they weren't even in the building to defend themselves. I wanted to fight back - to argue that it wasn't our fault, and what made them think they owned these desks anyway?! - but I knew it wouldn't do any good. They didn't really mean any harm; we were all just caught up in the great machine that is the MTC, being banged around by a few miscommunications. It's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
When I was telling my boss about it - I'd had to go to her office for a bandage, after cutting open my arm on one of those oh-so-precious desks - she had quite a lot to say about these missionaries and their "generation of Entitlement." She rolled her eyes and fumed, "I mean, when they get to the Philippines they're going to be sitting on dirt floors. They won't have desks at all! Where is their gratitude?"
I just let her talk. I saw both sides too well to fight for one. It was really irritating, of course, to deal with this kind of attitude problem in the midst of a huge organizational problem. But all the same, I had a feeling that the fact that they're going to be sitting on dirt floors for the next two years only made it seem more important to the Elders that they get to sit in nice desks now.
It's just change. At the MTC, where these kids are being thrown into an entirely alien environment and are expected to teach there, any loss of the little stability they have is a tragedy. Even if it's only a bunch of desks.
