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by Lore Sjöberg
Paper Clips
The paper clip was invented nearly a century ago. Since then,
there have been all sorts of pretenders to the paper clip throne;
plastic triangle clips, Garfield-shaped clips, little tiny binder clips. And yet
none of them are any true threat to the ascendancy of the lowly
metal paper clip, and for an obvious reason: you can't make bendy
shapes out of them. The ability to make bendy shapes at work is
intrinsic to the functioning of high-powered American businesspersons
everywhere; whether animals, sproingy jumping things, or just
abstract expressionist sculpture, bendy paper clip shapes are what
hold this country together.
A
Ballpoint Pens
Most offices are smart enough not to stock the really good pens.
They know that you can give away coffee, pads of paper, floppy disks,
and even low-end computer systems, but the minute you start to
stock nice rollerball pens in an unlocked cabinet, they'll march
on out of there at a rate that would bring the strongest corporation
to its metaphorical knees. Valuable stock has fallen precipitously
on the mere rumor that a company is about to start stocking good pens.
So instead, you get crappy, blotchy, smeary ballpoints in black, red,
and -- if you work for a really off-beat, feel-good company -- blue.
D+
White-Out
White-Out is not quite as important around the office as it used
to be -- who uses a typewriter anymore? -- but it's still
symbolically vital. It's common knowledge that the mother of former "Monkee" Mike Nesmith
became very wealthy as a result of inventing and patenting
the formula for White-Out. It just goes to show that anyone in
this country can, with sufficient ingenuity and a go-get-it spirit,
make it rich and give birth to a pop star. And isn't that
what we all aspire to? B
Graph Paper
Some people like your standard 8.5 x 11 ruled paper.
Others prefer yellow legal paper for its extra doodle space. Me,
I like graph paper. It's great for your basic writing, making it
easy to line up indents in a snappy manner; it's great for graphs,
of course, and I graph things for the heck of it more often than I care to
admit; and it's really great for doodling along the lines to see
what things would have looked like on a late-Seventies video game
system. And there's always the pleasure of impromptu Battleship.
B+
Binders
I can see why people might like binders; I prefer unruly stacks. Binders
remind me too much of Junior High, to begin with, and a lot of them
seem like they could take off a couple fingers if you closed the loops
the wrong way. At least in Junior High you had your choice of overexposed
media characters and/or unnecessarily enthusiastic sports slogans on
your binder. At the office you generally get a couple dark shades of
conventional. C-
Staple Removers
Yet another entry in the fun-but-not-for-what-it's-meant-for race.
I think I've used a staple remover to remove actual staples maybe
twice in my life. I generally just rip the sheets right off the stack; I'm
heartless that way. But I love staple removers anyway, because they represent
one of the few times in life that your employer will supply you with a working
hand puppet. Don't get me wrong; I don't sit and talk out load to my
staple remover. No, I just silently pretend it's talking.
Or sometimes I use it to threaten the phone. A+
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