Attention to detail

Come hither Joe Kerr Jr. Now. That is not a request. What's this?

It's an envelope.

I know full well that it's an envelope, my perceptual apparatus is fully functioning, or do you wish to question its representational fidelity? What I am referring to – as you damn well know - is the salient feature of this particular envelope, the so-called quality that marks it out for attention more so than your average run-of-the-mill envelope, is that its label is quite breathtakingly and impolitely non-aligned - not at right angles - to the edges of the envelope, to the point of belligerent impertinence. What if the client had seen it?

Since it's not addressed to them, but rather sent from us on their behalf ...

What if the recipient were to take that envelope and put it into another envelope and send it back to the client in quite justifiable disgust and uncontrollable rage? Wars have started over less.

Did you have any particular wars in mind, perhaps you could refresh my memory?

It's a little know fact that Hitler started World War II because Neville Chamberlain had sent him a postcard with the stamp slightly misaligned and, also, he didn't get that salty seaside humour we British are so good at - being German and all.

Is that a little know fact because, in fact, it's not a fact and you just made it up.

If you display such baldfaced boldness in the face of your own barefaced effrontery ... well ...

Yes?

Look, as it happens, I've amassed a vast nuclear arsenal in my garage, which right at this very moment I'm sorely tempted to detonate. Such is my perturbation at this willful display of dereliction, neglect and negligence of the highest order. What say you to that? Is that what you want? Why are you grinning? In fact, why do you never desist from grinning?

Did I ever tell you about my father? Now he had a temper.