June 24th, 2008

I'm sorry for such a frivolous and mindless topic such as this, but:

What is it with all the damnéd paper clips in the office supplies room? This is ridiculous; every office I have ever worked in has had shelf-fuls, nay, cabinet-fuls of paper clips whose vintages begin recently, and stretch back into the shrouded mists of time circa the 1980s.

It's as though every time people go out on an office supply run, they come back with one box of push-pins which disappears before it leaves the elevator to the supply room's floor, a couple of reams of printer paper, which gets evenly distributed to all the laser printers in Sales and Marketing (except for the token single package sent down to engineering), and four boxes of red pens people grudgingly take in the absence of black or blue pens, which are kept in the receptionist's desk drawer under lock and key and are only surrendered to those cute delivery guys who wear shorts even in the Winter, and an entire flat of cases of grosses of boxes of paper clips.

Thousand-weights of them ... billions and billions of them ... an ocean, a galaxy, an entire cosmos of them ... so many paper clips, in fact, that I wonder if maybe they are being stockpiled as a commodity to maintain corporate financial stability: "We lost $900,000 last quarter, boys; time to melt down a few million kilos of paper clips and sell the metal to make up the loss."

Does the CEO secretly come in at night with his mistress and take her swimming in the poolful of paper clips that his loyal and discreet minions have prepared for him earlier that day?

Or perhaps there is structural engineering value: "Warning! The building is listing three degrees to starboard! Quickly, now: Shift seven tonnes of paper clips to the East Supply Room!"

Defense? [Sounds of alarms] "Attention all workers on the mezzanine level: This is not a drill! We repeat: This is not a drill! Representatives from the SEC are entering the lobby! Get ready to pour the barrels of red hot paper clips onto their heads before they can serve their subpoenas! It's now or never, lads; if those audits are allowed to get through, we're all done for!"

It's just plain silly, I tell you.

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