My last paper shredder tragically died in infancy after I accidentally over-fed it.
It wasn’t my fault it didn’t swallow as many sheets as it claimed it could. At least my Tamagotchi gave reliable, honest feeding instructions and died in a swimming pool accident.
Shredder instructions always say: ‘In case of paper jam, press the “Rev” (Reverse) button.’ But if pressing “Rev” ever worked, they would regurgitate the paper properly and I wouldn’t have killed 4 paper shredders.
What it needs is a “Look, I know you’ve over-fed me but I can easily open up for you to get the paper out manually and sort this,” button.
Instead, when you lift and upturn the shredder mechanism, you’re greeted with a sorry mess of ridiculously stuck fast, raggedy paper and you know it will never live again as the instructions say it can only be mended by qualified shredder professionals with specialist tools to perform intrinsic surgery. To clarify, not by you, angrily hacking at it with a misshapen fork.
The instructions list items that should never go near a shredder. Top of the list is a baby. Understandable as they’re easily distracted by rusks and they’d never get any shredding done.
Second and third on the list are fingers and bracelets, meaning you have to bizarrely feed the shredder by using your mouth – which explains item no.4, ‘ties’ and why there are so many emergency call outs to people being strangled by ties caught in shredders. It’s the 7th most violent cause of death in Britain, apparently?
Next is hair. For years, I thought premature baldness just ran in my family, now I’m wondering if my nan was bald because of a bizarre office shredder accident?
The instructions finally warn that: “This shredder is not to be used by people with reduced mental capabilities.”
Which sadly means that I can’t leave it to anyone in my will.
As my shredder is the only valuable item I own, maybe I should just shred my will?
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Russ Writes 
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