There’s a right way, and a wrong way.
We’re a big lab. Currently about 20 active (quiet, Rohn) members in the group including grad students. And there’s a new kid on the supplier block. They are SDR Clinical Technology, based in Middle Cove NSW. I’ve never heard of them, but I already have them marked down as complete muppets.
They’re trying to raise their profile and get us to buy the stuff they distribute—fair enough, but what they’ve done is mail three catalogues each to over a dozen people in our lab, including the grad students (and countless more to the rest of the department). Each set of three catalogues (none of which were larger than A4) arrived in a ‘Number 7’ padded bag (‘361 mm x 483 mm Suits A3’) which ‘feature an extremely strong and light-weight bubble lining’ and are, apparently, ‘ideal for packing items which require some protection from impact’.
The catalogues themselves: one is an instrument catalogue, which is fair enough, but one is on behavioural research (eh?) and the third is cell biology and electrophysiology. No one here would know how to electro a physiology if it bit them (Ian?), and me, the token cell biologist in the lab, didn’t even get the catalogues.
Kate’s called them up to give them a bollocking, but you know, I think they’re onto something. If you cut down all the trees, there won’t be any more bushfires, right?
To be fair though, they did finally get back to me and amend their mailing lists. The recycle bin is now full t’ brim and one of our wonderful workshop guys swiped all the padded bags to reuse – score!
I keep on getting this sort of stuff as well. You would have thought the “Department of Mathematics and Statistics” in the address line would be a clue that I don’t want the latest whizz-bang machine or enough regents to put out a forest fire.
We recycle too.
You’re assuming, Bob, that these people actually think about such stuff.
I’d have thought that fifty bloody envelopes with the same building address might have been a clue.
snigger. That’s almost as good as ‘loosing passwords’.
I get that stuff every day and after removing the plastic cover and putting it in the rubbish bin, I put the catalogue in the recycling. I never crack them open. Never.
How many regents does it take to start a bushfire?
Rather!
Not even the NEB one, Jenny?
At the Maison Des Girrafes we have a very large shredder into which we insert junk mail, and it all comes out as ready-to-piss-on bedding for small animals.
That’d work for Honours Students too, I guess.
What, putting them in the shredder? They arn’t that bad.
They might make a nice bolognaise sauce, though.
I’m with Jenny on this. Although I wish they wouldn’t wrap them in plastic – it would make recycling them a lot quicker.
I kept a few catalogues because I think they’ll be hilarious in ten years (although I might have thrown them out in a recent mad cleaning frenzy)
I also love looking at old ads in archived journals in the library.
Catalogues are good for raising your computer monitor to an acceptable height. But not much else.
I also love looking at old ads in archived journals in the library.
I have a complete run of H. G. Wells’ Outline Of History, c 1921, still in magazine form (it was originally sold as a weekly part work). The adverts are great.
Here’s a famous (though possibly apocryphal) advert from the early 20th century
*Don’t kill your wife with work – let electricity do it instead*
And yet companies still send them out. To multiple people in the same group (these guys were only unique in degree, not kind).
Should someone have a word, or would an entire industry go out of business?
Cath
Catalogues are too shiny and tend to slip and thus make an unstable viewing platform.
What you really need to prop up a monitor are a couple of cloth bound PhD theses.
‘Cloth-bound’?
Bah.