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Talking Time's Top 50 Office Supplies

Droewyn

Smol Monster
(She/her, they/them)
iu
 

Ixo

"This is not my beautiful forum!" - David Byrne
(Hi Guy)
Johnny, intelligence was only on one end of that phone call and it wasn't hers.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
wiuzicN.png

#27
Scotch tape

Score: 77 - Votes: 3 - Highest vote: 7th (Bulgakov, Dracula)​

Ehhh!? Why, I've been had! This tape is far from magical!

JBear said:
For hanging office comics on the side of your desk or hard walls.

Kirin said:
when a thing needs to be stuck to another thing

Clippit said:
fsq08uO.png
The first sticky tape was created by a 3M engineer in 1930 using cellophane. Odd how many of these supplies can trace their origin back to the Depression era, isn't it?
 

Dracula

Plastic Vampire
(He/His)
Ah man I missed a bunch of stuff!

I'll just touch on paper, hole punching, and so forth. My wife works in education, and always has, and it's amazing how different the culture is in some school districts in terms of using paper. Different from the private sector (and probably some other public sector jobs), I mean. At my office, I can print out a hundred copies of some random personal bullshit and nobody will bat an eye. At some schools she's worked at, they give you a ream of paper at the beginning of the year and if you run out you gotta go get your own paper. Some teachers end up having to reuse the unprinted side of the paper.

It's not because of some forward-looking green initiative, either. It's just because schools are undervalued and under-budgeted. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so frustrating!
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
woPpRwp.png

#26
Phone

Score: 82 - Votes: 3 - Highest vote: 7th (Ixo)​

Yimothy said:
Communication is a necessary evil, but in the modern age you don't have to be tied to the wall to do it.

Ixo said:
Mostly in the capacity of a convenient camera and uploading device.

Falselogic said:
[The work phone is a] lifesaver. I just turn it off at 5. I don't want people knowing my personal cell phone or intruding on my personal life. Thank goodness for the work phone!

If you want to examine the impact of technology on our day-to-day lives, look no further than your pocket. Or maybe your purse. Or whatever. The point is, cellular phones have changed the way we walk, talk, and breathe. The effects aren't universally positive, but the convenience is undeniable. The Internet changed the world, and cell phones put the Internet within arm's reach at all times. The jury is out on what exactly this means for humanity.

Clippit said:
fsq08uO.png
Of course, I will live on long after the last of you is dead and buried.

Man, the image on this didn't turn out the way I hoped. 3D transforms are hard!
 
It was definitely a game-changer when I got the Kindle app on my phone, making for one less thing (book or Kindle) to have to lug to and from work. The downside is that people see you looking at your phone and assume you're not doing anything of value and start talking to you.

Oh, wait. They did that even when I was reading physical books. I used to have a bookmark that said "Don't talk to me I'm reading" and would lay it on the breakroom table next to me. Can't tell you how many coworkers would see it and go "ha ha" and then start talking to me. It's amazing how many people think of reading as just something to do to pass the time when there's nothing else to do rather than an activity you value in and of itself.
 

Ixo

"This is not my beautiful forum!" - David Byrne
(Hi Guy)
*gratefully pushes the “Human Contact frightens me” Help option*
 

Dracula

Plastic Vampire
(He/His)
When I started my current job, I was given a cell phone and the option to use it as my personal phone. I could probably save money that way. But instead I keep two phones.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
I don't generally think of my phone as an office tool, as pretty much all work communication goes through Slack (which I have on my desktop when I'm actively working, and only occasionally look at when I'm not), but I realize I have used it for work for Ixo's purposes, to take shots of hardware for documentation or temporarily in-app illustration placeholders.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
They haven't been issuing new phones to employees for a couple years now and we're about to get rid of all desk phones. I think I'm as baffled by everyone using a phone as other people were by how much paper I use.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
I actually don’t use my phone at work aside from on breaks and occasionally to take photos of things and then email them to my work address. I do use other people’s phones pretty frequently - surgeons are on call a lot, but you can’t answer the phone while you’re operating so I get lumped with it. Consequently I have a lot of conversations which start with thirty seconds of telling the person on the other end of the line that no, I’m not the orthopaedic registrar, they’re operating, is it urgent enough to interrupt them or do you want to leave a message? No, I don’t know about the patient you spoke to them earlier about, do you want me to interrupt them or do you want to leave a message? The doctor is scrubbed, you’re speaking to a nurse, is this urgent?

The type of phone I do use a lot, and which my vote was for, is a wireless handset connected to a landline. In theatre your number one job is always keeping the operation moving, so you can’t be tethered to the wall. I still have to put the phone down to do things sometimes, but being able to move around and out of the room while still talking makes a big difference. I used to hate talking on the phone, but I do it so much now I guess I’ve gotten used to it.
 
Phones are quintessential for what I do, but it's also associated with all the worst aspects of my jobs so it's hard not to resent them despite how useful they are.
 

JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
My work has occasionally threatened to give me a mobile phone over the years, but I have thankfully managed to dodge that bullet thus far in both my professional and private life. At this point, I think I want to live my entire life without ever owning a cell phone, just to prove that it can be done.

Also, I don't like them.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
zTvNZK4.png

#25
Ring binder

Score: 84 - Votes: 4 - Highest vote: 13th (Dracula)​

Dracula said:
Especially the kind with the clear sleeve on the front, so you can print out Meatloaf album covers and photoshop "BIOLOGY" on top of them.

Please continue the debate on how many rings/holes is the correct number. (For the record, though, three of our voters specified three rings, and the last just said "Binder.")

Clippit said:
fsq08uO.png
Friedrich Soennecken invented the ring binder in 1886. He's the same guy who patented the hole punch, and in that same year, too! It's a good thing, because no one was going to use this without punched paper.
 

Dracula

Plastic Vampire
(He/His)
It is literally impossible for me to hear or read "binders" and for my brain not to finish with "full of women." Whoever is rightly to blame for this, I hate them.
 

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
I think my vote for lever arch files probably should have counted towards this, and yes, definitely two rings (or arches, as the case may be) rather than three.

I’ve never really known what “binder” meant in an office supply context, because it’s not a term used here. I think I took it to mean either the type of folder that has a clamp along the long edge to hold paper in or like a machine for spiral binding or something. I guess it just meant files, though.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
QF5xqGu.png

#24
Ink stamp

Score: 88 - Votes: 3 - Highest vote: 3rd (Mogri)​

Torzelbaum said:
Something I don't use but which my dad used for his job so I have a lot of nostalgia for them. Started my lifelong affliction of inky fingers...

There's something very satisfying about slamming a stamp onto paper. In a past life, I was probably a librarian's assistant; nowadays, of course, the stamp cards in library books have been digitized.

Torzelbaum's #1 vote was for a specific incarnation of the ink stamp: the adjustable date stamp. These are probably a dying breed, as the physical limitations of the stamp mean that they're only good for about a decade. You can still buy new ones, but it's hard to imagine them getting a new lease on life. Then again, maybe there's an entire industry I'm unaware of that still relies extensively on them.

Ink stamps might well predate written history. Modernly, they're most commonly made of rubber, but it's easy to make your own stamps out of wood.


Administrative note: I'm out of weekend material, so we're in three-a-week mode from here to the end.
 
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