A Series of Unfortunate Shredding (Number the one after the first)

Onychophagia, or nail biting is a common oral compulsive habit according to expert sources*. These expert sources are silent on the presumably much more rare habit of shredding one's nails, however.

Given the silence of the experts regarding this disorder, I feel it is my duty to step in and put forth a working theory. By this effort I hope to pave the way for preventative treatment and to spread awareness.

As we all know, awareness of a problem is always the greatest part of the battle... or at least 5% or so of the battle. The other 95% consisting of laying down your pipe, extricating yourself from your velvet armchair, and actually working towards a solution.

Since this warning is only to be seen on shredders, I am lead to believe the disorder primarily affects office workers with too much paperwork. It is my theory that doing too much paperwork and later being forced to shred said paperwork muddles the brain. Paperwork feels meaningless to begin with a large percentage of the time. How much more so when the end product of that paperwork is trash?

When meaning is removed from work, the mind and hand tend to wander. Repetitive meaningless work magnifies the effect approximately ten fold according to the numbers which I have just made up. Eventually some percentage of workers are bound to daydream about the shredder being a Stargate, doorway to Narnia, or other portal away from the land flowing with paper and tedium.

Bravo to the shredder company for predicting this problem and clearly labeling their shredders as not being usable as a Stargate. If only they had designed the shredder to produce confetti for celebratory flinging at the end of the work day, I would heartily recommend they be given a standing ovation.

A Series of Unfortunate Shredding (Number the First)

It is difficult for one who has not studied the White-Collared Cubicle Dweller to understand just how excited they can become upon acquiring a new piece of office machinery.

If the machinery is communal, the Cubicle Dweller will gather with the flock to admire and test the machinery until the capricious office psyche is bored with the contraption.

Should the device fall under the sole proprietorship of a single Cubicle Dweller, one should steer clear of the giddiness, experimentation, and warning labels that are likely to ensue.

The picture above is one of the warning labels resulting from a Cubicle Dweller obtaining a paper shredder. Almost every shredder in the world has some form of this warning label emblazoned upon it. Why? For the simple reason that the first thing a disillusioned cubicle dweller will do with a shredder is attempt to transform any tie in the vicinity into something resembling confetti.

Dress codes tend to grate on the average Cubicle Dweller's nerves, and what better outlet could they find for their frustration than a tie, the very symbol of purposeless attire? Give them the ideal method of expressing said feelings toward said article, a paper shredder, and no one should be surprised at the results.

Fortunately for the Committee of Head Injury Avoidance, manufacturers have come up with this sort of label to call for a thoughtful pause to consider that perhaps the tie should be unfastened from it's current host before being sent to it's well deserved fate.

Personally I think they went a little overboard by portraying a tie only and not the unfortunate gentleman attached to it, thus implying that ties simply shouldn't be shredded and flung into the air during the Boss's Lunch Break Parade. But I suppose that would probably have gotten the shredder a PG-13 rating for scary images, and they really wanted to keep it more of a family friendly shredder.