Friday, October 2, 2009

I hate shredders

Hey all:

Been organizing my office, which means a lot of shredding, which means a lot of shredder jamming. We have two shredders in the house, one tiny 3 paper one and one that holds 6 sheets. I've learned these numbers are no arbitrary. I've learned the hard way, by jamming each one of them on numerous occasions when I tried to hopefully "squeeze just one more page into this batch of shredding..."

It's not that I can't count to 3 or 6 it's just after shredding over and over again your brain (well at least my brain) starts to think, "you know John if I could just squeeze in an extra page or two here and there I could cut down on my shredding time and do something more fun, for example actually write something..." So I inevitably try to cram a few extra pages in, figuring, "this time I will get it."

Ever once in a while it does work. There are times though, most times actually when I end up jamming the shredder. I need to use the reverse button, tooth picks, ice picks, scissors or whatever to unjam it.

This begs the questions: why I do repeat the behavior when I know what is going to happen and why don't I just rip the damn things by hand?

My answer (albeit not a good one) is: I somehow think "current John" is smart than "past John", past John is the guy who tried to cram 8 sheets into the 6 sheeter but did it wrong. Current John learned from his mistakes and will now cram those 8 sheets in better. Even if this current John fails, he will learn from the experience and make future John brighter.

That is my answer, which I like better than just admitting I'm lazy and not all that bright.

This will certainly show up in working daze.

3 comments:

Teigh said...

why dont you just "dule" shred you know move the 3 and the 6 next to each other and put paper in the at the same time, it would help cut back some time and some of the erges to put 8 in the 6

Clay Williamson said...

I, too, have had many frustrating moments with my ex-paper shredder. I hated cleaning the thing out, hated the greasy feel of the blades. I decided to get a more powerful shredder and the shredder I have now says its guaranteed not to jam. It'll stop if it senses too much paper. Now I don't deal with paper jam.

Peter said...

I agree shredding documents can be a real pain if there's a lot to do. In the past I used to let my paperwork just mount and mount until I had to deal with it, which just made shredding a terrible chore. Nowadays I try to shred whenever I get some spare time and it makes it a lot easier doing small amounts.