How Many Staples?
The real title of this blog should be "How Many Staples Are Too Many Staples" but that just seemed wordy.
A long time ago, I worked for a remote insurance claims office. It was just my boss and myself and insureds doing stupid things and some of them doing stupid things over and over again. I had big windows and lots of spare time that I could use as I wished. I suppose my boss would have been fine if I had brought in my ironing (but I don't iron - that's another story). At the time I was painting on cloth which was very popular in the 70's so in my down time I painted on a spare desk.
Once a month or so all of our closed files were boxed up and sent to the regional office. The files were then reviewed before they went on to who knows where.
Here's where human nature and staples collide. Think about it, you're working with a stack of paper and need to add one more piece on top. What do you do now? Do you take our the previous staple(s) or do you just put ONE more staple in the stack of papers. I don't know about you but I was pretty lazy so I just kept adding staples onto staples.
After boxing up one month's worth of closed cases, I received an interoffice envelope from the supervising secretary at the regional office. Guess what was inside? If you guessed staples, you're right. Eileen (who was 110 in my opinion) had removed ALL of the staples from ALL of the files, COUNTED them and returned them ALL to me! Counting the staples took a lot of time and was probably over the top when a simple message would have probably sufficed. Thing is - I never - added an extra staple to anything - or at least anything that Eileen was going to see!
So if you've ever had to copy a file that has a zillion staples, all of which have to be removed, you will appreciate the theory of ONE staple or else a big clip. Lesson learned.
P
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