Whistle Ink ‘Office Supplies’ Blog

Everyone has either pulled an office prank or been the victim of one at some point in their office based career, here is one of the most elaborate office pranks ever as seen on youtube.

This office prank video has been named the best ever office prank, see if you agree.

The pranksters build a wall at the start of a corridor confusing office workers who cant quite fathom whats happening. Initially they think theyve taken a wrong turn. The hidden camera shows them scratching their heads in confusion as they return to the spot.

My office pranks were never so elaborate but Ive pulled a few in my time.

One of my best was learning how to do the trick whereby you look like youre levitating. This is great for showing your staff or colleagues who has the power.

You can learn how to levitate yourself here

http://www.howtodotricks.com/balducci-levitation-blaine-levitation.html

Meanwhile here are some office pranks you can pull on co-workers using office stationary. You are responsible for the consequences!

Paperclip trick
Link your colleagues paper clips together and then put them back in the box. This will drive them mad trying to unravel them all.

Sticky tape trick
Tape the wheels of your colleagues chair so that they cant roll. This will drive them potty.

Post- it note trick
Put your litter - bin on your desk and label it with a post-it note with the word “IN”.

Pen trick
Stick the lids on some cheap pens using glue then swap with your colleagues pens. Imagine their frustration as they try to wrench the lids off without success.

If you can think of more great office pranks using office stationery let us know.

Parliament

With all this expenses scandal going on I was interested to see how much was spent on office supplies. If some of them went crazy of the trivial items I imagine be able to order multipacks of top branded gel pens to be the order of the day!

I’m sure a quick scan of Whistle Ink and they could have reduced his office supplies overall! Here is the list of office supplies products they took the time to declare:

The claims:

Douglas Alexander claimed claimed 43p for a box of rubber bands and £7.83 for a box of disposable latex gloves

Sarah McCarthy Fry claimed 17p for two paperclips and £3.56 on gold and silver sticky stars

Andrew George charged £4.99 for a telescopic flick duster and £31.50 for a winter candle

Ed Balls, the Education Secretary and leading Brownite, claimed £9.99 to buy The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid His Majority

Martin Horwood, Lib Dem MP for Cheltenham, sent his PA away for a couple of days and spent £693.25 on the course “How to Be A Proactive PA”

Hugo Swire, Tory MP for East Devon, claimed £24.50 for an orchid plant for his office in 2005

David Cameron, the Tory leader, claimed £10 at the Parliamentary Bookshop for a copy of The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches

I’m sure these MPs would be any office stationery companies dream customer!

Source

The governments plan is to require supermarket to sell more products loose and look at offering refilling options.
We used to take our soda bottles back to the corner shop and until a few years back when our milk came in bottles and got delivered to our door – we put the empty ones out.
How would you feel going into an office supplies store and then say grabbing a handful of paperclips, or picking up a loose pad of post it notes or cartridges without the cardboard packaging?
There would need to be set containers that you could pay for one and then you could bring that in and fill it up and get charged a standard price – kind of like the salad section where three sizes of containers at different prices.
What other office supplies do you think would work?

To read more about the new propsals from DEFRA click here

Dymo Labelwriter 400

I have this label printer the Dymo Labelwriter 400 and its pretty impressive.

Do you know when sometimes you have printed off a good few sheets of labels in the laser printer for a big mail job and then go and mess up a label for whatever reason? What a hassle.

Or when you realise you need to print one again or missed some out?

What a load of effort that involves, that you almost give up and walk out!

When it comes to the time you need to print just one or a couple of labels off the fly, simply select the address in Microsoft Word for example and with just one click your label is printed and ready.

There is no need to refill the ink either because it’s thermal printing. All the Dymo Labelwriter range is thermal printing so no expensive ink or toner cartridges needed. The only supplies you need are labels.

The little Dymo Labelwriter must be very slow if its very small?

Nope. It takes just 1 to 1.5 seconds and it doesnt make a heavy noise either. By teh time you have printed it and walk over to where you keep it - it’s ready to peel and stick.

Features & Benefits

• Eliminates the hassle of printing labels with a standard office printer.

• Direct thermal printing means you never change a ribbon, toner or ink cartridges. The only supplies you ever need are the labels.

• Fast print speed. Just 1-1/2 seconds per label. Very quiet.

• High resolution printing means crisp text, graphics, photos and barcodes.

• Includes easy to use DYMO Label Software that makes it simple to design labels and manage address books.

• Includes add-ins for instant printing from Microsoft Word, Outlook, QuickBooks, ACT!, Goldmine, Palm Desktop version 4 or later, WordPerfect® and more. LabelWriter also prints from other programs through standard print drivers.

• Easy to share over your Windows or Apple Macintosh network.

• Includes the free DYMO Software Developers Kit (SDK). The SDK lets you develop support for the LabelWriter into your custom application in minutes. Includes tools for all major development languages.

• Note: The LabelWriter 400 is NOT compatible with DYMO Stamps software.

You better believe it! Catherine Zeta Jones raked in a whopping £1.5 million in salary and expenses for advertising hair care product called Lux which is made by Unilever.

You are not going to see it here in the UK though; it was filmed in Prague and will be shown in China and Japan.

However here is the clip for you:

Source

Instructables shows you how to build the Starship Enterprise out of office supplies. You’ll need 3 medium bull dog clips, 1 large bull dog clip, pens, 3 CDs, glue, tape and a marker.

Build the Starship Enterprise

Show someone you love them (in a non-sexual harassment way) by making them an origami flower out of post it notes

Origami Post It

Impress your colleagues, though not necessarily your boss, by doing magic with paperclips

Magic with Paperclips

Re-enact your favourite medieval battle scenes and invade a nearby desk using your very own office stationery trebuchet (i.e. catapult type thingy)

Office Supply Trebuchet

Pop some bubble wrap. And if you haven’t got any try the virtual alternative.

Virtual bubble wrap

We are all doing our bit for the environment, whether it’s recycling with the help our local councils as they provide coloured bins or off our own backs but what if we were forced to do it through the purchases we make?

Nowadays the vast majority of us recycle paper, throwing out the piles of newspapers, magazines and the countless junk mail we receive – but how many of us then go out and buy recycled paper?

If we put paper out to be recycled why don’t we buy paper that has been recycled, completing the cycle fully?

Recycled paper is now alot cheaper than ever and may cost just a few pence more than ’virgin’ or brand new paper so what if manufacturers decided to no longer produce cheap brand new paper and instead only offered us a version that was more environmentally friendly – maybe not totally 100% recycled but nonetheless ‘greener’?

I doubt many would notice the difference – especially as the idea of cheap copier paper is to print non important work at home and at work for internal documents for filing etc.

If you look at the cheap 5 Star range of copier paper – the descriptions are virtually the same:

5 Star Office Value Copier Paper Multifunctional 80gsm 500 Sheets per Ream A4 White [1 Ream]

And

5 Star Office Copier Paper Multifunctional 80gsm 500 Sheets per Ream A4 White [1 Ream]

Yet the second one, which costs around 50p more is manufactured using FSC pulp from mixed sources.

The second idea is to tax virgin paper increasing the price. Maybe slightly more complicated (!) to implement but I’m sure this would have an effect on the price conscious consumer.

If virgin paper was £1.50 - £3.00 more than the recycled paper would that change a consumer’s habit?

If you currently changed from virgin paper to recycled paper for home or office – how are you finding it? How would you feel if you were faced with just one option when it came to budget copier paper which was recycled or at least more ‘greener’ paper?

Whistle Ink is one of the leading and largest office supplies product information sites that give extra value information about office products before customers buy.

Eco Label

EU Eco Label:

At least 10% of virgin wood fibres should come from

certified sustainably managed forests.

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The Blauer Engel (Blue Angel)

German Blue Angel:

For recycled paper to qualify for the mark, it must be made of 100% “waste paper” (tolerance 5%), and contain at least 65% low-grade or medium-grade scrap and waste papers. Waste paper is defined as papers and boards obtained as a result of use or processing. Only the Blue Angel eco-label refers directly to recycled content.

It is one of the world’s first environmental accreditation programmes and is internationally recognised.

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Nordic Swan Label

Nordic Swan

The criterion for this is on the environmental effects of the manufacturing paper of recycled copier paper rather than on how the raw paper materials are selected. E.g. post consumer waste, sustainable forests.

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FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)

One symbol you may see often for recycled paper products.

To achieve FSC Recycled certification the paper mill must meet strict guidelines particularly regarding the traceability of the recycled fibre.

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Some office papers that have a range of recycled content:

• The 5 Star Multifunction Copier Paper is manufactured using FSC pulp from mixed sources. This one could say is better than buying 100% virgin paper.

• Canon Multifunctional Paper Recycled 80gsm 500 Sheets per Ream A4 Paper White Ref 81140 [1 Ream] This is probably the best paper at the best price point for everyday use. Made in Europe from 100% post consumer waste, Canon Recycled Copier Paper has the highest environment accreditations: Nordic Swan and Blue Angel.

• Evolve Office Recycled Copier Paper Multifunctional 80gsm 500 Sheets per Ream A4 White Ref 70478 [1 Ream]- High quality multipurpose recycled paper made from 100% reclaimed material

For more information about Recycled Paper and to download a PDF booklet on procuring office paper with recycled content click here

See the range of recycled office copier papers today at Whistle Ink

OK, so they’re not pinching handbags or robbing banks but according to a survey by Fish4Jobs, minor theft of stationery costs small businesses some £831M every year – and average of nearly £45 for every employee.

The interesting thing is 78% of office workers admit to having stolen stationery from the office. Have a look around you. If you can see 3 other people, then they’re all thieves! (Because you’d never do that would you?)

So, short of bringing in the coppers, what can small businesses do? Well the reason most frequently cited for why this kind of theft was OK was the fact that employees had to incur minor expenses like using personal mobiles for business calls.

Company mobiles all round then?

Perhaps not.

It’s possible that when you even think about recycled copier paper you see the price and think ‘no way - I can get two reams of new paper compared to the price of one ream of receycled copier paper‘.

Right?

I guess it’s one of those personal decisions you have to weigh up. I can only assume that it must cost more somewhere in the chain for it to be priced so high.

The price of recycled copier and recycled laser paper isn’t just down to the retailer or the place where you buy the paper from but probably beyond the wholesaler.

We currently buy the 5 Star Multifunction Copier Paper for £2.03 exc vat and the cheapest really recycled paper - made from post consumer waste - is the Canon Multifunctional Paper Recycled 80gsm Ref 81140 which we buy at £2.58.

That’s a reasonable price? Yeah sure. Maybe it just deoends on how much you but but still why does it have to be more expensive?

Evolve Office Copier Paper Multifunctional 80gsm Ref 70478 is another high quality multipurpose copier paper made from 100% reclaimed material costs us £3.14 exc vat.

When every penny counts what would you choose? Or does it not matter all - it’s recycled paper all the way?

Click to read more about recycled office copier