'10 Ways to Be the Coolest with Duct Tape'

10 Ways to Be the Coolest with Duct Tape

By Brian K White at 04/16/2007 12:30

Whether you work in an office, metal shop or aboard an oil drilling rig, there are certain tools of your trade you can't do without. Maybe it's a stapler, box of binder clips or full set of metric ratchet tools. In any case, there's another tool, one more ubiquitous, that you need to keep on hand, stock up on, and never forget. I speak, naturally, of duct tape.

No longer merely for ducts, this silver-faced tape has been used for everything from taping pipe-work to securing missing hatches from fighter planes. So if it's good enough for, well, just about everything, maybe it's just the thing you need to make you the coolest worker in your work place.

Here are the ten coolest uses for duct tape you might not have considered:

• 1 - Use it to close wounds. Forget bandages, stitches and butterfly closures, whether the wound is big or small, so long as it hasn't hit an artery, you can close it temporarily with a single swath of duct tape.

• 2 - If you have an offending car parked in the "Customer Only" zone, you need a parking boot. You know the kind, they're used to lock down offending automobiles with a fury sufficient to prohibit them driving away. You could spend hundreds of dollars buying such a parking boot, or you could use a single roll of tape to wrap it, lock it down and insure that the driver will never again dare to step wheels in your most coveted parking space.

• 3 - Suspend tremendous weights from girders. I know it may not sound too terribly cool, but when nuts and bolts fail you, always bear in mind that there is nothing one can suspend that one can not suspend with a couple quick wraps of the shiny, silver tape.

• 4 - Block entrance to the complex. If you're doing pavement repairs or lack onsite security sufficient to keep unwanted cars out of your complex on nights and weekends, you really need a fence, gate and secure locking mechanism. Those things can cost upwards to tens of thousands of dollars, so in the mean time, just run a couple quick lines of self-stuck duct tape across the opening. While it may not stop cars entirely, it will surely remind the drivers they should have read the signs before barging in, and it will lead ultimately to a single, undeniable truth; that you are cool.

• 5 - Use it to foil cat-burglars. One of the most overlooked benefits of duct tape is that it can be used as a ridiculously binding double-sided tape. Sure, it's too much for your office documents, but is it too much to place atop your roofline, window vents or strangely accessible ventilation ducts? Some would say yes, but you know better, the answer is plainly "no". Use loops of double-folded duct tape to create roach motels for cat burglars and watch the accolades roll in when the big break-in is foiled by a stuck cat burglar, thanks to you.

• 6 - Make yourself into a handsome pseudo-mercury statue. Things can get dull around the old office place, and you may already know this if you are one of those who have worked in one. Spice things up by wrapping yourself head to toe in an absurd sheath of duct tape, then walk around insisting that you're the guy from Terminator-2. While you may not be cool in fact, you might convince yourself that you are, and really, isn't that all that matters?

• 7 - Affix the office kiss-up to the wall, desk chair or ceiling. I mean, seriously, how cool is that? You may not realize how sticky this stuff is, so hopefully, this person won't either. Make it like a little joke at first, but lay it on thick and quick and you'll quickly be delighted as the joke turns to sheer terror and that jerk-face is semi-permanently stuck to the place of your choosing. A desk chair is an easy choice, and a wall can take a bit more doing. Structural support pillars are also good, but if you're really feeling up to the challenge a ceiling can be the best. You can leave him or her there indefinitely, and if they get obnoxiously loud, just tape over the mouth. Since this is already a hated fixture around the office, everyone will agree that it was a joke in good fun, so don't hold back.

• 8 - Repair every office woe from the paper tray that won't stay in place to the latch on the fire door the smokers need to get back inside. Whether it's a problem with a swivel chair or a wobbly leg on the break room table, duct tape can fix it, fix it good, and fix it more or less forever. How cool will you be when you fix the table so wobbly it keeps spilling the accounting lady's sweet and sour all over the funny papers?

• 9 - Bind the very essence of the universe together, much like "the force". Just like the force, duct tape has a light side, a dark side, and literally holds the universe together. Not everyone in your office will understand this, but those who do will surely see the brilliance you bring to the table, even if it is a wobbly table, and even if you are just the one that stopped it from wobbling.

• 10 - Upset your urologist by unpredictably binding your kibbles to your bits, you know, just for fun. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but is "an idea", and whether or not it will actually make you cool or not is ultimately up to you to decide, but it does make me pretty cool by suggesting it, assuming you consider it even for just a second.