A Fool's Cap

If I told you that the biggest problem at my office is paper size, you'd probably laugh, leave or tell me to get a life. However, I would argue that consistency in paper size is essential to good human relations at work. Allow me to illustrate my point.

I work at a Primary School. This school has a ridiculous policy of printing all of their staff handouts on A4 paper and all the their student worksheets on F4. We all share the same printers, so you can imagine how many times a day people get to the printer to find that some inconsiderate staff member has stuffed the thing with F4. ("Whoops! Looks like I've just ruined pages 3-6 and 11-12 of your twenty-page document. No worries, just print them again. Or better yet, get your scissors out and try to cut it back to size. It'll be fun!") I'm no paperist (well, no, maybe I am), but I think we would all get along better in a mono…err papery society. A4, A5, A3. I think they've got the bases covered. I might even be willing to switch to F4 as long as we only used the F family and all its kin. I'm just looking for a little consistency.

After printing a six-page document at work (two of which were F4) I had an argument with a fellow staff member. She was convinced that the school could not survive without F4 paper because, "sometimes you need extra room on a worksheet". I tried to tell her that I went all of my schooling without a piece of F4 in sight, but she just laughed at my ignorance and reassured me, "But F4 is better. A4 will be too small la". (Many Hong Kong people add "la" to the end of just about any sentence they utter in order, I think, to emphasise their point.) I wanted to push the argument further, but I had a feeling she was one of those pesky F4 sympathisers and I didn't want to push my luck.

Enough is enough. I don't want to sound like Hitler or Pauline Hanson, but it's time to implement a One School, One Paper policy.