Shredder with a message

As many offices do, our company bought a large paper shredder many years ago. There were many reasons to get one but it ended up that the Engineering group bought it for safely getting rid of printouts of our computer programs and schematics of our devices. Not long after we got it, though, many groups started to use it. The finance group used it to destroy old financial records and the human resources director used it to destroy old resumes. As more and more people used it, our Director of Engineering attached a funny little label, "Whatever happened to the 'Paperless Office'?" as you can see on the picture to the right (if you can't read it in this small view, just click on the picture to expand it). He had been around when people really thought that introducing computers into the office would allow them to operate with less (or no) paper. Boy was that wrong!

About this time, the directors of our company made a big push to solicit employees suggestions. It was a great idea and a lot of people made suggestions and I was one of them. I came up with a lot of suggestions. And I thought they were all wonderful. Well, none of my suggestions were taken. So, in a fit of "getting back" at them, I added my own little label to the paper shredder. You can see that in the picture on the left. My son gets a kick out of this story. He still says, "...and they still haven't figured out that you put that sign there?" Well, they hadn't unless someone from the office reads this post.

I think part of the reason he likes it is that he sees a different side of me than he knew before. I always try to get my kids to follow the rules and not say negative things about people. Of course, there is a fine line between looking at people and things critically and just always looking to complain; just as there is a fine line between following ALL the rules and thinking before doing something just because that is always the way it was done. I hope to write about the time I saw a different side of my father, too.