I showed up to work one morning and found this interesting work of art sitting on my desk. What is it? An octopus? A jelly fish. I tracked down the artist, my JTE Kaori Yamaguchi, complimented her on her creativity and thanked her for the gift. She told me that it is in fact an octopus, so mystery solved.


When my desk was moved last year to its current location the rumored reason was to encourage me to communicate more with my fellow co-workers and learn Japanese. I don't know if I've learned any new Japanese as a result, but I do meet a lot more teachers ever since getting placed next to the shredder. Every few minutes my quiet rest is abruptly disturbed by a very loud grinding noise. This noise is followed either by a groan (by the teacher), or a sigh of relief depending on whether or not the machine jams while devouring the paper. I'd estimate that it jams roughly 50% of the time.


The paper shredder is actually one of the more stressful things I deal with every day at work. Every time someone walks up to it I know that I'll probably have to interact with them, especially in the event that their paper gets stuck. Usually they just laugh, say something to me in Japanese and fix the problem themselves. Other times they don't know what to do and I have to come to the rescue by opening the door and crushing the shreds inside to make room for more. In more serious cases experts from the office downstairs have to come up with screw drivers and hammers to fix it. Another thing that stresses me out are the teachers that are really careless with the thing, dangling their fingers dangerously close to the hole containing the mysterious paper shredding mechanism. Despite the stress it adds to my life, I feel like "Old Shreder" and I have almost become friends. I know all his ins and outs, what he likes to eat and what he can't stomach and how to make him feel better when he's sick.




I thought Old Shreder could use a little sprucing up, so I whipped out my pencil crayons (colored pencils for those of you that can't read Canadian) and some markers and added a little colour to the art work Kaori left for me. I then named the octopus "Kaori" after its creator and made her the official mascot of the office paper shredder. I guess by now that you're probably thinking that I have way too much free time on my hands. You're right, I certainly do, but for the first time I feel like I'm not the only one at work who does.