20 MORE Unique and Funny Office Supplies
We did a post awhile back on funny office supplies, but with the rate things can change at work, we felt it was time for a refresh. (Is there a Moore’s Law for unnecessary office objects? There might be.)
Let’s be clear: some jobs can be great and awe-inspiring and purpose-driven and fun and a host of other adjectives. If that’s not the case, why not have a flash drive in the shape of a pig? Or a cone that says company policy is to blame the computer? We spend 8-12 hours/day at work. Why not giggle to ourselves in between the urgent projects hitting our desks, right?
Here are a few more to bemuse you:
It’s possible your co-workers will think you have a problem, yes, but otherwise it’s actually pretty funny. And hey, it shoots red ink — which is the universal ink of criticism.
“Won’t you be my neighbor?” Some have likened work to a neighborhood conceptually, so providing encourage-mint (get it?) from the most neighborly of all the neighbor hosts seems like a nice idea.
“I’m not an afternoon person either”
Funny sign on face, yes — but also brings up an important point. Most of us are not very productive in the afternoon, so if you want a strong productivity idea as you laugh at some of these, here goes: “eat your frogs in the morning.” That’s a Mark Twain quote, and if you don’t directly see the link back to work, click the Fast Company link right there and you will.
“The day was in dire need of CLT-ALT-DEL”
We’ve all had these days, and attaching a 1950s housewife to the image somehow gives it more heft.
“They were helpless without her”
Same vein as above. This brings up another interesting point about work, though: many people literally define work as a quest for relevance. After all, if you’re going to spend a lot of waking hours at a place — you want to make sure you “matter” to that place, right? In some ways, that’s the definition of employee engagement — which is why you absolutely need this sticky poster on your desk right now.
“Provide appearance of busy in meetings”
Funny, as we’ve all sat through pointless meetings. One company actually spent 300,000 hours — that’s the entire working year of 34 employees — on one meeting. Just one weekly meeting: actually having it and prepping for it. It’s a true story.
It kind of makes you think about the old Microsoft help paper clip, doesn’t it? Sometimes we all need to attach the word “Help” to a colleague’s pad in a meeting or presentation — and now we can!
No real idea why someone would want their to-do list to look like toast — it feels like you’d spend a lot of time getting hungry and be less productive — but it’s aesthetically pretty cool.
“You’re wise, young grasshopper.” Or, conversely, you just have a weird stapler in the shape of an insect on your desk. It’s Monday and you don’t have time to really ponder the difference.
Ever make a mixtape for someone you liked in middle school or high school? If you ever find that mix tape — or get it back from them — and list three songs off it, it will instantly date you almost to the hour of your birth. It’s a fun party trick. And now you can take notes for work on what looks like a mix tape!
USBs come in every conceivable shape and gag these days, but this vacuum one is pretty funny.
Pens No One WIll Want To Borrow
A pen from “Verdant Fields Nudist Camp” probably won’t leave your desk much, or be stolen by others.
The world is dominated by emojis right now. You can order a pizza with one! Why not interject some into your desk space, as opposed to just a few work texts that your Boomer colleagues fail to understand? “Is this an eggplant?”
It somewhat lines up with this org chart:
People I want to punch in the face journal
Under no circumstances do we condone workplace violence, but keeping a list of those who fit this category helps with the stress of dealing with them.
Forked Up business card holder
Some think the business card era is dead in the age of LinkedIn, but if you take a lot of external meetings and have people coming through your office, why not provide business cards with a fork statue?
There are dozens of different clocks and clock themes out there on the Internet, but this one — an old record with the words “spinning time” on it — holds a special nostalgic place in our hearts. (Much like the cassette sticky notes above.)
Put annoying co-workers in their place — but humorously!
Regal and classy. We’d recommend putting a silver pen in it for ambience and color scheme.
Priority alignment and management is a major problem in many organizations. Why not actually tell your employees something is “urgent” vs. “trivial?”