Recycling

There's a fascinating ritual at my work regarding paper recycling. We go through mind-boggling amounts of paper, so it makes sense to recycle some of it. The week before the Weyerhaeuser man is scheduled to come and pick up our 8-12 large bins of waste paper, every person in the office takes a turn spending as much time as possible finding paper they can put into the bins. I suppose it's a short escape route from real work. I'll see people bring stacks of folders over, and go through each paper in each folder to see if it can be recycled. Over the course of the week it becomes rather humorous. I don't especially blame people, I like taking breaks from work too, but watching things like that can reveal a lot about my co-workers. I don't think I'm an especially astute observer, but I have a pretty good idea of which people have violent allergies to work. I noticed which people had already used up all of their sick leave and vacation by October, and which people claim they are too busy to take phone calls, then proceed to browse online. I can't claim to be a flawless employee myself, but things like that tend to irk me a little. Oh well, I will probably remain irked and do nothing about it. But my memo to the world is that you can't be a slacker employee like that and expect your coworkers to be charmed by your delightful personality, because they will always harbor a slight resentment (even if they are fighting it) for having to make up for your slackerdom.

Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.