SHREDS OF EVIDENCE
We’re planning to sell our stupid filing cabinet (the lower drawer sometimes gets stuck open) in our upcoming garage sale. To prepare, we dumped the contents onto the floor and combed them for what’s important and what’s not.
Figured we didn’t need to keep electricity bills from three years ago, along with many many other strange pieces of paper. I had quite a pile to run through our shredder.
(By the way, if you don’t have a paper shredder, why not? It’s a simple step toward protecting your identity. We shred anything with our names on it. I would caution you, however, not to try shredding slices of American cheese or tortillas ... no matter how thin you think they are. Trust me.)
Anyway, we had paycheck stubs going back four years. It’s funny to look and see how little we lived on back then. Then it’s sad to look at how much more I make now and how we seem to have even less “extra” money. Guess it’s that old human nature kicking in and that most of us spend to the level of dough that rolls in. Our savings account is getting mighty lonely.
Even funnier than the numbers on our old paystubs are the “safety slogans” printed on ones from the last newspaper that employed me. Employees could submit ideas for them, and the winner got some kind of award (special parking spot for a month or a bundt cake; ‘twas an honor never bestowed on the T-Bone). Keep in mind that these are a few years old:
1. Safety begins between your ears
2. Yo quiero safety!
3. Safety is Y2K compliant
4. Safety doesn’t hurt
5. Safety ... you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone
I think the paper got some sort of insurance discount with the slogans on our paychecks. A newsroom is a dangerous place, what with all the senior editors running around with scissors and pencils.
Stay safe out there! Anyone need some confetti?
