Office1000 Blog April Archive

Plain and Simple Fun Facts About Office Supplies

By Brian K White at 04/25/2007 14:45

Imagine a store where everything is free. Better yet, imagine a store where everything isn't just free, but where, regardless of the price, someone else pays for it. Now imagine that all you have to do to earn such free things is keep a job at an office, and use these things to advance your professionalism. Sounds too good to be true? It shouldn't, because this is what the rest of us call "a job", with the buyer being "your boss" and the random stuff being "office supplies".

You can take them home if you like, but the criminal justice system calls that stealing, at least in the 96 nations where I've researched it. If you also maintain a legitimate home office as a satellite to your work place, that might be okay. There are those who partake in this so-called "stealing" activity, but they are the most peculiar of all, since after all, 99% of the things freely provided in the work place have no value outside of it. I mean really, what are you going to do with envelops branded with your corporate logo?

But you can steal them, if you like, and that's no discredit to you. It doesn't mean you're a bad person by any means, just some sort of social deviant, miscreant or other sort of negative thing ending with the suffix of "ant".

If you have a home office, which I assure you that you do, and you have needs for these supplies, which I would likewise insist that you do, you owe it to your business, your office and your boss to take home all of the myriad things you need to insure your home office is as productive as the space you keep at work.

For example:

• You can take home ten boxes of staples, even if just to insure that your sandwich bags are sealed, your neck ties are properly affixed to your shirts and your many report pages are properly affixed to one another, specifically in the middle of pages.
• You can take home twenty or so rolls of Scotch Tape, even if just to insure that your Secretary's Day gifts are properly wrapped, your tie is affixed without the detriment of damaging staples, or that you multi-page reports are properly bound, even if improperly so with merely Scotch tape (since you took only staples, but no stapler.)
• You can take two or three whole boxes of paper supplies, even though you only need so many thousands of pages to insure that your 10-page report can fully print out at home without the possibility of running low on paper.
• You can order mad gaggles of toner cartridges for you home printer, even though you'll only need to print maybe 100-pages of office related documents per month, in sharp contrast to the many thousands of pages you'll print out of pictures of your children, random copies of your blog (about how much you hate your work) or many dozens of spreadsheets pertaining to your cat… maybe that last one is just me.

Regardless of your needs or purposes, there is a wealth of available products just sitting in the back storage room in wait for your rampant pilferaging, and it would be derelict of you to not act upon those needs.

Why Using White-Out is More Fun

If you've ever had a desk in a place where you work, it's almost certain you've known the magical benefits of White Out and what it can do for you. In the unlikely event you're new to this whole arena of workplace delight, you can still use the following list as a handy reference for the fun that is to come, specifically thanks to White Out.

• You can artificially make exciting even the dullest of filler words.
• It can cover that pesky drop of coffee you couldn't otherwise hide on your shirt or tie
• Especially in the case of boring, interoffice memos, it can make such boring subjects as "the time of the meeting on Monday" seem romantic and sexy, just by needlessly blocking them out.
• When the FBI comes in to do an audit, they'll spend countless hours scraping it up just to verify what you've always asserted; that you have nothing to hide. For the sake of fun, start by whiting out words like "the", "and", "to", and single digits of telephone numbers.
• Assuming you've invented human invisibility, only to accidentally inflict yourself with it, this will give your teeth that bright, white luster people expect from real, visible teeth.
• If your Styrofoam coffee cup gets that "not so ivory" appearance, you can cover over even the most pesky stains of coffee or cocoa with just a quick dab or two of White Out.
• In the unlikely event your manager requires legal-sized sheets of paper in white, instead of the standard yellow, don't fret or sweat it, just paint over the entire sheet with a mere buck-or-two of White Out per page. Sure it makes for lumpy writing, but he or she isn't likely to actually use it anyhow.
• You called in sick but went skiing, and today you have an unholy red ring of raccoon eyes from your ski-slope sunburn. You can worry that you'll lose your job for the lie so undeniable, or you can make the very best of it by covering up the reddest parts of your tender punum with broad strokes of white out. It's not like you're going out for any kind of beauty contest this week, so liberally apply the liquid paper correction to your nose, forehead and cheeks as needed. If you are asked about the texture, insist you have a skin disorder, and that you're in fact quite sensitive about the whole issue.
• If you are a personal assistant, and your boss asks for 7-Up or Sprite, but all you have is cold coffee from yesterday so stale it's already begun to bubble of its own accord, don't admit you've brought the wrong drink, but instead coat the outside of that clear, plastic cup with white out. If it's clear, you're in the clear, and your promotion can't be too far behind.
• If you break off a bicuspid right before that big meeting that could make or break your career, glue a niblet of corn to your jagged chomper and paint it white. Not only will it pass for a legitimate tooth, but an exceptionally pasty one at that.
• Assuming you take prolonged, six-or-so hour naps in your cubicle, it's imperative that you appear to be awake. Nothing says "my eyes are open and I'm working" like insuring the whites of your eyes are plainly visible. Use White Out in the graphic murals you paint on your eyelids that look as though your eyes are open. Think about it, if they can see white in the place where your eyes ought to be, they must be open and you must be awake. While you're at it, make sure the pupils aren't pointing all callywompus googley, because that isn't convincing a bit. This list, however long it may be, is by no means exhaustive. Count on Office1000.com to post even more handy uses for White Out in the future.

Nine Ways to Bore Yourself with a Photocopier

Of all the things in your work-a-day office environment, nothing is as ubiquitous as the photocopier, unless of count you count your chair, desk, stapler, and perhaps the conspicuous lack of window you have. It would be delightful to find a way to entertain yourself with the photocopier, but that may be a dream just out of reach. In the mean time, consider instead the more likely possibility that you can daily bore yourself with this very same device.

What follows are just a few of the many, great ways.

• 1 – Photocopy non-nude photos, specifically uninteresting ones, specifically of the blurry, grainy and indiscernible varieties.

• 2 – Print out the office betting pool on the latest professional or college game. Though it's obviously against company policy, don't' worry, you won't get fired unless your 16th-seated team unexpectedly charges at the end, putting you on top, winning you the full $126 pool. Sure, this will forever label you as the proto-typical office gambler slash cheater, and thief of work time, productivity and office supply value. Hey, no one said being a winner is easy.

• 3 – Use your photocopier to replicate the rules to fight club, but remember, the first rule is that we never talk about fight club

• 4 – Make infinite copies of the photos of your kids, pets, yard and car, no matter how blurry, gray and dark they may be. Bearing in mind that nobody will ever be able to see what you've copied, these will indeed be exceptionally boring photocopies.

• 5 – Use the photocopier (or network printer) to "accidentally" print the manifesto… it doesn't matter which manifesto, honestly. Once it's got "manifesto" in the title, and it's caught by the IT guys, you're pretty much doomed professionally.

• 7 – Catch "MF Tray Jam", but don't correct it. This will obviously inflame the whole office who needs their L2, P1 and other such tray-things duly printed. They'll assume someone can fix it, unaware that you already know that P1 Jam feed error U4 tray feed correct, please remove, which you adamantly refuse to do… you wily dog, you. How boring indeed!

• 8 – In a pinch, you can use it as a paperweight. It's overkill, sure, but just think of the amount of paper you can secure from even gale force winds with a several hundred pound photocopier. By the way, when I said, "in a pinch", I meant that it could pinch off even an entire limb of yours, properly dropped upon a section of your body, as it is precisely "a pinch" indeed.

• 9 – If your job seems too pointless to bear, consider making tens of thousands of copies of blank sheets of paper. It won't run through the toner cartridge, so you won't have to deal with that, but you might find some relief in mixing it up a bit. Consider the difference between single sheets of nothing compared to 50-page, collated sheets of nothing. That ought to make the work day just fly right by.

How to Use Stacking Folders to Get Along with Your Co-Workers

Regardless of your work place, there are a few simple tools you can always employ that can help you get along better with your co-workers. The obvious ones include personal hygiene and abstaining from racist jokes, but did you know that you can also win friends and influence subordinates merely by employing stacking folders? Here are a few of the more common ways to do so.

You won't appear elitist just because your inbox is of higher elevation. A stack perhaps ten-high just means that you really care about getting your interoffice memos, and noticing them when they come in.

Having a complicated series of boxes in, out and otherwise makes your work appear so complicated that others will be afraid of it, insuring no one will try to steal your job.

In a pinch, stacking folders make a great fort for protection against having to look at your coworkers.

Whether you work in an office or not, you can still use them. If you sell doughnuts, consider this a unique, though peculiar way, to file and organize your goods for display.

If you have a problem with staring out the window you've been luckily graced with, use an extensive array of stacking folders to obscure the view, thus keeping you on task, more productive, and a better coworker all around.

If you want to really get along with your coworkers, you can have one stacked folder for each letter of the alphabet, thus converting your entire filing system from that pesky horizontal method, to a more interesting vertical system.

Emergency preparedness may be the best tool you have in case of the unexpected. Always bear in mind that stacking folder, while light enough to throw with significant velocity, also have pokey, jabby edges that can leave a would-be assailant with nasty lumps to the noggin in dire moments of need.

10 Ways to Be the Coolest with Duct Tape

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.

How to Impress Your Boss with a Laminating Machine

How to Impress Your Boss with a Laminating Machine

By Brian K. White

Of all the things on your forever growing "to do list" today, the last thing you want to do is add yet another, but consider, even if just for a minute, that this next one might make you successful. No wait, not just successful, but so prominently prominent in your successes that someday soon you'll manage the whole department, and upon another day quite soon thereafter that you might rise to even own the entire company. You can do it, and I'll tell you how, by the great and grand graces of the laminating machine.

Yes, the laminating machine.

Sure, you can use this handy contraption merely to seal-in copies of telephone directories or inventory lists, but you can take this device to a higher level, even whilst it takes you to yet a higher level still. Unsure? Unconvinced? Uncertain of the many graces it may bestow upon you with it's mighty heat and dual sheets of previously unconnected plastic? That's okay, I'll gladly help you understand how it's done.

If your boss keeps a hand-written schedule that includes all the assorted, sordid outside-the-box items as day spas, on-the-clock shopping and other personal uses, make sure to take these pages and laminate them. It may not please your boss, but it will definitely impress him or her, even if just to cement your cunning as sure as you've laminated his or hers.

If you have a coworker who is a total suck-up, which you certainly do, unless you are that employee personally, you've surely stumbled across a handful or so documents proving it. These people are prone to contradicting themselves, swaying with the politics as quickly as the winds flow. Seal in their sycophantic deeds and insure your place as a true and steadfast employee by laminating their up-kissing deeds forever. Though your boss might not appreciate it today, the day will come soon enough, and you'll surely get your due for it.

Once you've finished whatever you wrote on that sticky note, laminate it. You can never know when it could be handy to share a few hundred thousand laminated Post-Its from years past. Modern historians may find this pointless, but think of your grand-children, children, and the boss sure to replace your current boss who may be tempted to cut you loose for not carrying your fair load. Face facts, it can't be denied you did your deeds if there's a sealed-in record of it.

Assuming you have access to spending and account records that may be damning, use lamination to seal these original, time & date of documents, preferably with newspaper snippings embedded for future use. While this may not exactly "impress" your boss, it will leave an impression, and one that won't quickly fade.

Whenever possible, insure that printouts from the company CCTV security showing you having unpredictable and potentially embarrassing interludes with your boss are printed out and laminated for future reference. You may need to have unpredictable and potentially embarrassing situations with the security staff to insure that you receive said printouts, but once you have them, it's entirely up to you to have them laminated. Surely this can never happen, so assuming your boss agrees that it didn't, you'll be golden up to retirement, so lamination will be key.

If this ideas seem to outrageous to consider, you can always go back to using such a device for directories, ID badges and fancy interoffice presentations. That's still impressive, helpful and may keep you in the realm of indispensable, even if it doesn't make for as good of a story at your Friday night poker meeting.