Shredding In-House
I’ve got to say that I’ve heard this line a good few times ‘ we shred in-house’ and each time I do, I do a sequence of things. I firstly laugh really loudly to the whole office, I then google the company to make sure to never use them and then I pity them. I mean this seriously. There are people out there that will have someone in their office spending hours a week just shredding away.
Too harsh? Well, at least let me explain.
[bctt tweet=”Perhaps you can call me a snob but there are some jobs that if I don’t have to do myself, I won’t.” username=”totalshredltd “]
When my wife and I moved from a small apartment into a house, the workload massively increased. The obvious job of cleaning and general home maintenance almost tripled. And oh yeah, how could I forget the garden? We suddenly had one and the grass just wouldn’t stop growing.
My first few weekends in the house were spent cleaning and polishing, changing bulbs and general rubbish that I’d rather not be doing. I’m married to a lady that’s more fastidious than Monica from friends. So you can only imagine. And after a 60 hour week, the furthest thing from my mind was spending my weekends just maintaining my house.
So after eventually snapping out of being an idiot, I started to remind myself that my time was in itself a commodity. It had a value. And as long as that value was greater than that of a couple of hours of a cleaner and a gardener – then my house maintenance days were over and the outsourcing would begin.
With that in mind, I hope you can now appreciate that when I hear people shred in-house, I laugh really loudly to the whole office, I then google the company to make sure to never use them and then I pity them.
And I’m no fool. I get it. If you don’t have heaps to shred and it’s a few important bits here and there that you’d rather not leave lying around – then a paper shredder is not only your best bet, but it’s the most cost effective option.
But that’s not what I’m talking about, as you well know.
I’m talking about larger companies that have bought dozens of paper shredders and/or even an industrial one and have teams of office staff handling that. That’s when I ask myself what does all that cost: for companies to factor in the time it takes for someone to take all the papers out of a file, take all the staples out, slowly feed 1-4 pages through these machines that sounds more annoying that my neighbour’s 6 dogs? What’s the hourly rate of that person? How often do the machines jam? How boring is it for someone to do that ?
I could never get my head around companies who operate like this and actually, not just thought, but believed that forging ahead like this was more cost effective than actually hiring a shredding company to just handle that.
Now maybe it’s just me – but some jobs are meant to be outsourced. And if anyone reading this doesn’t agree – feel free to come round to my house, I’ll cancel my plumber and you can fix my broken toilet.