(j/k)

I then reminded him about the time, before we were dating, I came into his office for a meeting only to demand his stapler and disappear down the hall with it. I was wearing a wrap top from which one of the ties came unmoored and had to staple it back into the seam in the bathroom.

After an embarrassing incident with a hole in the seam of my pants, I immediately bought a small sewing repair kit to keep in my desk (which I haven't needed yet, luckily). One other think I always keep at work is a bottle of No Fray. You can get it in a pack of 3 for under $5 at sewing and craft supply shops. If you get a tear or hole in a garment, one drop will seal it and keep it from getting bigger. It does leave a darker spot on some materials, so you have to be careful how much you use.

Enjoy permanently ruining your clothes!

I linked together a few zip ties and laced them through the loops. Worked like a charm. At the end of the day I just had to cut them to get my pants off.

I'm an ugly scruffy compunerd and looking unprofessional is practically in the job description.

I will say, however, that folding out staplers and ejecting a rapid-fire stream of staples over the cube wall is much more fun that fixing a hem.

I was in kindergarten in 1970. It was fun. I had a little boyfriend named P.J. He didn't want to be my boyfriend but I made him. :)

Otherwise I'm all about paperclip hems.

I also have a small sewing kit for buttons that fall off but whenever I sew a new button on I always put a drop of crazy glue on the back side where the thread is, works like a charm, I've never had one fall off twice.

@pecan 3.14159265: I too was in kindegarten in the 89-90 school year. Those were the days...

(I've inadvertently seen lots of other women's bras in various jobs and I always have to wonder: why did their parents let them leave the house without learning this trick?)

The pants were black so I positioned the stapler so the two "ends" of the staple were showing - then I touched them up with a black CD marker to mask the shine.

I was fine until I got home and fixed the hem myself.

Where is it now that I need it?!

I use binder clips to cuff up my pants when its raining.

if you are a woman wearing pantyhose/stockings and having terrible static cling put some lotion on your legs right through the stockings. sure, you have to wash them more thoroughly later but your skirt didn't end up hiked up to a NSFW position during the meeting!

@Ratty:
No kidding- Have people forgotten how to sew?

I almost always have a needle and thread.

I used to White Out my Adidas shell top sneakers when they started yellowing.

It's come in handy for me here and there.

Now to replace all the button-ups in my work wardrobe....

Double sided tape.

If you're wearing a knit garment and a button comes off where it would gap embarrassingly, you can often thread a paper clip through the fabric where the button was and then "button" the buttonhole over the paper clip. If you have a pair of needlenose pliers handy, you can even twist the wire into an attractive (OK, comparatively attractive) shape.

@CFinWV: Or even cello tape. But you have to do it correctly. You'd be surprised how many people attempt to place the tape ALONG the hem (horizontally). It just does not work that way. You must use pieces of tape ACROSS the hem (vertically).

Black sharpies are also great for fixing small bleach spots on clothing. One of my favorite black shirts somehow came out of the wash missing some color in a few places (which is really weird cause I don't use bleach and I own my own washer) and a sharpie fixed it right up. About every 10 washings I need to touch it up again.

That Mighty Mendit stuff works surprisingly well for some TV product. It has served a lot of other purposes beyond fabric glue/bonding/whatever too.

I've also got a portable sewing kit that's fairly small--don't see what's wrong with having one of those handy.