paperwork

Remnant of the pre-paperless office stage of business and bureaucracy.

Remnant of the pre-paperless office stage of business and bureaucracy.

Get it? It's in triplicate!

I have, at times, created and processed significant quantities of paperwork. It's aptly named, I'd say, since the best paperwork (a dubious honor for sure) involves a lot of effort and uses a lot of paper. And it is filed and forgotten.

I had an employer once who wanted a report every week detailing network connectivity statistics. At its inception the report numbered over one hundred pages, all printed from an intranet site.

Binding it was a chore, to say the least.

Finally, the higher-ups saw the light (or the bills for all that paper) and asked only for printouts of the freakish occurrences.

The ironic thing, though, is the fact that they placed such importance on metrics that were determined by--get this--looking at small graphs and guesstimating. Actual numbers were available but the bosses wanted pretty colors and pictures.

My motivation for shoveling through the piles of paperwork that land on my desk at work comes solely from the knowledge that once I'm done with it, it's going someone else's desk to cause them grief.

'Nuff said.