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22 Apr 2005
What's the attraction behind printing things out? The new guy at work has printed at least a dozen emails this week, and also printed several of the documentation pages out and posted them in his cube. When I'm showing him something, I'm sure to say "This has a Wiki page. You can just copy and paste these commands I'm running, just like I'm doing right now." But he has to write down every command I run on a big ol' pad of paper.
I've been trying to stay virtually paperless. I take notes on my PDA instead of dead trees. I do have a notebook handy in case I need to do something that requires it, like diagramming an application or environment, but I rarely have to use it. I kinda feel like the wasteful habits of my co-worker are invalidating my good intentions. Looking around me in the last week, I've seen a lot of desks covered in stacks of papers, and I'm finally realizing how common this is. Why do so many people need paper copies of everything, when they just end up being unused clutter?
khatt says:
If it makes you feel any better Log, there are other people out there that are similar to you, so at least you know you aren’t the only one in the world who is doing anything about it.
At one job, my boss prints a lot of things out (and I’m surprised since she is pretty hippie) like emails, and the other day someone accidently printed on the wrong paper and just tossed it in the garbage!
From my last job they were throwing a lot of paper away, and I couldn’t bear it, so I loaded it all up in my car and brought it home to recycle.
Not to mention how upset I get with everyone and the amount of cups, etc they use at other work! One jerk and I got into a fight about how “ridiculous” it was for me to worry about things like that. (Aside from the fact that minimal environmental impact is part of the mission statement and therefore part of his job…) And that it was “totally illogical” etc etc. I think he was semi-insane though, and definitely an incompetent slob.
AND if you are going to print out all those peices of paper at least REUSE them instead of buying a pad of fresh white paper!
/rant
I’ve been on about this since middle school and it’s my first time here in a while and the discuss link was provocative.