h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nice Entry!

Here are a couple of hints for update:-


If (in addition to the universal risk of paper cuts) shredders rip and rend, hole punches/staplers perforate, there is a third part to the netork of evil which are office machines.

Namely, laminators.

These machines are developed to encase paper in a plastic jacket and make it, at least in theory, indestructible. (Never try to shred a laminated document, btw: the shrapnel factor is worse than squeezing a fistful of razor blades)

Think of what a laminator does. You take a floppy plastic pouch, hinged at one short end, which looks as if it's never going to be a risk to anyone anywhere. You tuck your A4 paper up inside it making care the top short edge butts up against the hinge in the pouch.

Then you feed it into the rollers of the hungry laminator which is by now fired up and working at full heat.

Note the combination here of "rollers" and "heat".

The rollers squeeze the paper firmly between the two flaps of clear plastic and the heat seals it all together by spot-welding the plastic to itself at the edges.

All very well when it works, but just you try removing a laminated sheet that has begun to wind itself around two VERY hot rollers rather than oozing out of the slot at the back.

In the best of circumstances, cue burnt fingers!

In the worst...well, my personal horror story is of watching a woman, innocent of any knowledge of neither heat nor electrical
conductivity, poking in between the rollers with an ordinary metal table knife to try and free up a jammed laminate... fortunately heat conductivity, rather than the electrical sort, made her realise the knife had suddenly grown rather hot, and she dropped it with a shriek and a burnt hand...


The inside of a blocked photocopier, jammed with the cheap crap paper this company persists in buying, (espeicially if the block is high up close to the hot box thast fuses toner to the paper)can also pose a nasty surprise or two...