Office Supplies of Mass Destruction
Bored staff make use of office supplies to stir the office a bit
Back in the 1980s when I first started work in a busy office, office stationery had two distinct roles. On one hand it was used in the day-to-day operations of our division. For example, we used to order lots of filing books, paper and floppy disks (you mean you’ve never heard of them?)
But there was another important role: Weaponry.
There were two main types of weaponry, too. Firstly there was the “war of minds” where we would photocopy lots of blank memo paper and write funny/sarcastic/downright rude comments about fellow office workers on them and pin them on the walls.
If we chose to target the section leader then obviously it was done under cover of darkness (really early or really late) and everyone in the office would deny all knowledge of it because they knew that the boss would get quite angry.
This type of psychological warfare was even better utilised in larger companies with lots of different offices.
As a trainee, I used to write something borderline offensive on a memo and simply pop it in the “in” tray of the sales department without anyone seeing me. The key was to put it in the “department internal” tray so people thought it was someone from inside that specific department.
The hilarity!
By the way, just to give some reference to this, we didn’t have email back then, it was before such clever stuff so our abuse was very much “old school”.
However, that’s only part of the story, because we also used stationery as a weapon across desks. Not to cause harm, granted, but usually just to knock someone’s cards over if it was their birthday, or maybe land a rubber in their mug of coffee.
Every now and then we’d do something a little bit more dangerous and put a pin in something so it will stick to a cork-board which we’d use for target practice, but that’s about it.
However, a quick search on the web and we find that people are doing much more with their stationery these days.
For example, there’s a whole section of the “Instructables” website that has ideas just for weapons made out of office starionery:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Office-Weapons/
And check out this one: http://www.instructables.com/id/Office-Supplies-Challenge-Liquid-Fuel-Rocket/
Let’s be clear, we wouldn’t condone the use of office stationery to launch all-out war on your desk neighbours, but on the other hand, if you’ve ever come up with something exciting, why not let us know?
This article originally appeared in: http://www.theofficesuppliessupermarket.com/blog/office-supplies-of-mass-destruction
