A co-worker and I were grumbling about some irritating office phenomenon that wastes a little bit of our time every day. I estimated that it wasted an average of 5 seconds of my workday. Laughing at this tiny figure, we proceeded to explore, via a series of calculations, how this wasted time would accrue over a week, a year, a career . . . . Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle of all the multiplying and dividing, we lost track of exactly what "x" we were solving for and what our answer -- 28,571 -- actually represented. It sure seemed like a good answer, though. When another co-worker walked into the room, I promptly informed her that we had just determined that it would take 28,571 undefined units to describe a forgotten scenario. "That sounds about right," she said without missing a beat.