I've noticed that most people, particularly office workers, are quite choosy about what kinds of office supplies they'll use. There are just some things about certain office supplies that can drive a man / woman / whatever a little batty, perhaps even for stupid reasons. What's your office supply pet peeve? Mine is duotangs. I hate duotangs, and I hated when teachers made me use duotangs. All they do is fall apart and wreck the holes in sheets. I put a lot of time and effort into properly punching those holes, you stupid, flimsy excuse of a binder.
I actually liked using those to hold scripts when I still did theater, but my pet peeve is somewhat similar. The two-pronged folders. They seem like a pretty good idea since they take up far less space than a traditional binder… until you end up needing to rearrange something that’s out of order. Royal pain in the behind. (So I guess I would actually say fixing other people’s mistakes is the real pet peeve, but hey, it pays…)
I use very few office supplies at home these days - I'm a cheapskate who writes on the back of envelopes and uses free promotional pens or ones which my OH has brought back from the bookies. The thing I hated most at university though was ringbinders. I'd always end up having to buy those ring reinforcement stickers as the paper would soon tear at the holes. Grrr!
Being left handed, I hated all ring binders and notebooks. It's a pain in the butt trying to write with them digging into your hand. I much preferred the wireless composition notebooks, or a steno pad when taking notes in class or at work. But unfortunately for some classes, we had to use the larger wire bound notebooks. As for pens, I also hated the standard ball point pens, because the ink was sticky and would get all over my hands (once again, due to being left-handed). Don't even get me started on pencils... Instead I preferred to use the fast drying Rollerball style pens from Pilot. They look like technical pens that graphic designers use, and write so much smoother than conventional ballpoint pens. You can definitely feel far less fatigue on your hands when writing a lot using them. Aside from that, I am so glad that most offices these days have moved on from paper filing cabinets for everything. One of my prior jobs involved us keeping all sorts of physical paper records for all of our students, which was such a pain in the butt to keep everything up to date with what was on our computer databases.
