office efficiency: waste management
I have to wonder because that’s what I do when I’m monotonously placing copy in individual modules that eventually becomes page elements what sort of idiot dreamed up the paper-less office. Predicting folk would ditch paper in favor of pixels is bold. We’ve had paper for a few thousand years and computers for a few decades. I realize we could be at the cusp of a revolution here, but that cusp has been a long time coming.
Do you know what we have to show for it? You can stop shouting answers, I can’t hear you, and those around you are dialing physicians. My desk looks like an oak tree performed Seppuku and twisted on his way down. It’s customary here as with most places that hate the planet to print a document, with slight updates, that has already been printed, and then hand them out to a bunch of people who don’t care to look at it.
Offices are forward thinking, you say? Sure. If by “forward thinking” you mean they consider ecological disaster to be a fiscal goal. There have been numerous, ignored, digital memorandums that looked to organize and recycle the bulk of the pulpy tide. The giant blue bin still fills up faster with paper than a college dorm fills with ignorance on move-in day.
People are not only holding on to their paper-consuming ways, they’re increasing their habit exponentially. These piles of thinly sliced 8.5in by 11in used-to-be-tree-matter are what happens when too many morons have too easy access to programs like Word, Excel, and a color printer.
Just now, I’m looking down at an Excel spreadsheet which I think is the fifth iteration that looks exactly like the first, but for a few words and maybe a hue with color combinations a kindergardener would avoid for fear he’d be ridiculed. In an attempt an hilarious one at that to save paper, the type is quite small and it’s printed in landscape orientation. Did the person who sent this to the overworked printer forget that they had already printed four other versions that were similarly ignored?
To make things worse, like adding pit sweat to a shit sandwich the very thing computers were meant for is being utilized. There is a copy of this fucking spreadsheet on a shared server only two people don’t have access to. Apparently, on top of wasting their own time, the earth’s resources, and the financial investment of the money-strapped company in supplies, the person printing this gem wanted to use up some data storage space.
Nice prediction, science.