Of all the items of office stationery in the world, there is none which upsets me quite as much as the stapler.

I failed to understand staplers from an early age and looked on in amazement at primary school as my classmates volunteered to use the staple gun to attach displays of coloured paper to the walls.  I had a few encounters with staplers at secondary school but they were brief and unsuccessful. I found them mystifying objects and was totally in the dark as to how other people managed to get the staple in the correct bit of the paper. My staples either missed half the page or ended up too far in so that the top corner of the page was impossible to read

When I went to uni, my boyfriend was very into stationery and reproached me for the inadequacy of my own stationery collection. Over time he furnished me with paper clips and a hole punch, but I refused point blank to own a stapler. He made a few half hearted attempts to teach me how to use his, but we reached an arrangement whereby anything I needed stapled, he stapled for me.

Then, of course, I started work and working in an office necessitated use of a stapler. Worse, being a nomadic sort of employee, I was actually forced to invest in my own personal stapler which I have to carry about with me everywhere I go.  My stapler has now been all over the place, even to Toulouse Anyway to cut a not very interesting story short, eventually I learnt to staple and although I wouldn’t say I’m a natural in the discipline, I nevertheless think I can now manage reasonably well

Okay, so today. Today I had a very simple task. There were three pension schemes and for each of them I had to print out five sets of accounts along with covering letters and ensure they were posted to the client. Now that isn’t normally my job, but the secretary is on holiday and I didn’t have a lot else on. Sounds like child’s play you might think.

Bear in mind that each of these sets of accounts is thirty pages long, so that’s a fair bit of printing. And, once printed, all thirty pages need to be stapled together. Therein lies the rub.

My stapler is a small light weight sort of stapler which stands as much chance of getting through thirty pages as I do of swimming the channel. So I was forced to use this great big whopping one belonging to the secretary. I can’t really describe it to you because to my mind it in no way resembles a stapler, but let’s just say it’s big and scary and totally unusable :cry:

Warily I try to staple set of accounts number one. I push with all my might, with the result that I get a slight dent in my paper but no staple. I continue pushing but nothing happens. After a while I conclude I am not strong enough to use the stapler successfully whilst seated, and will have to stand to get more leverage.

Standing, I push down again. This time I get two staples. Yeah that’s right, two staples embedded in my accounts. I try in vain to remove one of them with my ruler but I can’t get it underneath. After trying and failing with an assortment of pens, I resort to using my finger nail. The second staple is removed, but in the process I a) stab myself painfully under the nail and b) accidentally remove the first staple too

Now I have a sore finger and a set of accounts with an unsightly staple mark in it. I try stapling a second time, using all my acquired skill to aim the new staple into the holes of its predecessor. I press down, release, open my eyes to look at the result… I now have one and a half staples

Yep that’s right, one and a half. One staple is perfectly positioned in my accounts, and another one is half in my accounts and half stuck inside the stapler. By virtue of this, my accounts themselves are now firmly attached to the stapler and removing them without tearing seems problematic. I try sticking my fingers up inside the stapler, and thereby sustain the first of many staple cuts. In the end I attempt to take the stapler apart and resolve whatever sort of blockage is clearly messing up his insides.

Thirty minutes later I have failed to take the stapler apart. I feel the situation calls for a man, so I call on my friend Matt. He smugly demonstrates how I have been attempting to open completely the wrong part of the stapler and casually removes the blockage without sustaining any injuries.

Okay, deep breath. I attempt to staple my accounts again. I press down with all my might, release and… this time I end up with a mish mash of FIVE staples embedded in my document. I try desperately to detach the accounts from the stapler again and then remove the unwanted staples. I eventually succeed but in the process I sustain so many cuts to the fingers that I accidentally bleed over the accounts

Oh dear. They needed to be signed but probably not in blood. I’m just in the middle of using the balance sheet to stop myself haemorrhaging when the manager walks past to ask if I’m finished yet only do I realise there’s a postal strike this week so he wants to make sure the accounts get in the last post. He pauses halfway through his sentence when he registers the fact that I am sitting bleeding in a sea of mangled staples and gives me a disgusted look as if to say “we pay you £xk per year and you can’t even use a stapler properly?!” before walking away

Fifteen sets of accounts later I have lost a great deal of blood and twice as much dignity. I hate, absolutely totally HATE staplers, all the more so because all the rest of you probably aren’t going to understand how impossible they are and will just laugh at me

But I don’t care: Staplers of the world, plz die

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