Skip versus the Swingline

«filed under grudgematch-of-the-century»
The contenders:
Skip:
Strengths - opposable thumbs, sentient
Weaknesses - weak

Swingline:
Strengths - made of metal, staples well
Weaknesses - one-trick-pony

My task for the day was stapling articles from the first 65 years of September and October issues and sorting them by ingredient (some of them were, lets just say, difficult so I have 'fried' as a category). This is about 4 or 5 reams of paper. The stapler and I got along quite well in the beginning. It did its job; it helped me do mine. There were no jams, there were no misfires but then it ran out of staples. When I reloaded, the spring-loaded leaver thing got wedged in such a way underneath the staples that I could neither get the leaver nor the staples unstuck. Not wanting to bother my busier colleagues and partially enjoying the challenge, I looked around my borrowed desk for something to help me pry the offending staples out. And there was little. I have one pen, so that was out. Pencils are weak (I confirmed this later by destroying a beautiful one from the Rio de Janeiro Ritz Plaza Hotel). Just cut the fingernails. Paperclips were all I had going for me. After mutilating a dozen I sat back and thought about what I could do to get more leverage. In the end, I clipped two paperclips [above] together and successfully removed the staples. This took a half hour and I was genuinely excited about it.

The Winner: Skip, I think.

In other news, some of the ads from the 1940s and 50s were pretty ridiculous.





This delightful illustration accompanied recipes for fried squirrel and possum cassoulet





onward and stuff.

[n.b. - I love my job]