Let me set the scene, because if you weren’t in an office (or indeed born) in the Nineties, you won’t believe me. There was no internet. There wasn’t even a computer each. Each team shared one computer, mounted on a big swinging arm like a dentist’s lamp, and if you wanted to use it, you hauled it round to your desk. Having first applied for permission, in writing, three weeks in advance.
We recorded our correspondence on a Dictaphone: a tiny cassette recorder you held up to your mouth like a 1950s newsreader. You’d say, “Dear Mr Bloggs, comma, further to our telephone conversation of the fourteenth, full stop, new para,” punctuation and all, then hand over the tiny tape to be typed up. Your Team Secretary would sit with headphones and a foot pedal, rewinding every time you mumbled incomprehensibly, and then getting the giggles when they realised that when they thought they\u2019d heard “Past Asians” you\u2019d actually said “Power Stations”.
In my case, a two-line fax could take me four attempts, one sneezing fit and a long tangent about the weather that I’d forgotten I was still recording.
Entertainment was similarly rationed. The office’s entire comedy output for the decade was one joke:
“Can I use your Dictaphone?” “No, use your finger like everyone else!”
(Joke copyright Andrew Miller, 1998. Andrew, if you’re reading this, it still gets a laugh. From me. Alone. In my kitchen.)
So, you can see why, one slow afternoon, a colleague and I ended up lobbing a rubber (an eraser for readers in the US) back and forth across our desks. I’ll be honest, the guy made me a bit nervous: the office equivalent of a small yappy dog that might be friendly but you’re not putting your hand out to check. But we were bored, defences had been lowered to DefCon 5, indicating that imminent attack was unlikely.
Back and forth went the rubber. Lob, catch, lob, catch. Then it was my turn, and somehow (I still can’t explain the physics) my legendary throwing arm suddenly misfired. Like Wile E. Coyote watching his latest Acme rocket veer off course, I had just enough time to hold up a tiny sign saying, “Uh-oh” before the rubber \u201cgrazed his cheek\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear, this was a graze. From a rubber. The softest projectile known to stationery.
He did not see it that way.
He snatched it up and hurled it back with the full force of a man defending his honour, bellowing something along the lines of: “Do that again, you [word my mum would not want on this blog], and you’re DEAD!”
Unfortunately for his big dramatic moment, his aim was off. The rubber sailed straight into the row of go-karting trophies lined up proudly on top of his computer, and down they went like skittles. CLANG. Clang. Clatter-clang-clang. A small, gold, plastic avalanche of motorsport glory, all over the carpet tiles.
I’d love to tell you I said something devastatingly witty. I did not. I froze. Then I picked up my bag, walked to the door and went home. In hindsight, it was the most efficient conflict resolution of my entire career.
And that would have been that.
Until a couple of years later, I heard a similar story being retold at the watercooler. \u201cHave you heard the one about this guy who once…?” Within 30 seconds I realised it was \u201cMy story\u201d. Except it wasn’t exactly my story… somewhere along the way, the punchline had been embellished, upgraded, enhanced. In this new and improved version, it wasn\u2019t a rubber I\u2019d had launched at my head.
It was… a hole punch.
So, here\u2019s the science bit. If a rubber takes only two years to morph into a hole punch, and it’s now 2026, how has the hole punch of yore continued to develop in the storytelling of 30 years since?
For what it\u2019s worth I like to think that somewhere in the London Insurance Market, there is an old market crone telling a wide-eyed new joiner about the legend of a man who, in a fit of pique, once threw a photocopier at one of his teammates.
For the record: it was only a rubber. A small, slightly grubby one.
Thrown by a grown man.
Having a tantrum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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