The Paperless Society

I like watching The Sopranos for the simple reason that its New Jersey setting reminds me so much of my hometown, Chicago, and its suburbs. When you see Tony Soprano driving along an expressway (or freeway if you're from California), notice those oil tanks and refineries he passes.

I worked at the Cities Service Refinery on Cicero Avenue in Chicago during the summers when I was in college (late 1950s). It was good, hard work. Cities Service hired about seven or eight guys each summer and paid us very well. We unloaded box cars and trucks. Did you know that a 40-foot box car can hold about 4,000 cartons of oil cans? They're empty when they arrive but are filled within a couple of days. Each carton contained 24 empty one-quart cans. We placed the cartons onto a conveyor belt. Usually, we had to remove and stack the empty cartons on the warehouse floor, but sometimes the cartons went directly to the processing area where each can was filled with oil. This was fully automated (with human guidance and monitoring all along the way).

Two or three guys would unload each box car, and two or three more would stack the cartons inside the warehouse. Sometimes we would leave openings inside the stacks of cartons where we could hide and nap when no box cars were on the siding and no trucks were at the dock waiting to be unloaded. We welcomed these rest periods, especially on those hot, muggy days when the temperature was in the high 90s and the humidity was about the same.

Empty new and reconditioned 55-gallon drums were delivered by trucks. We wore shoes with metal plates over the toes to protect our feet. Empty drums weren't too heavy, but when they were filled with oil, they weighed about 400 pounds. After we removed a drum from the conveyer belt, we tilted the drum and then spun it across the floor to one of our co-workers, who would catch it and stack it with the others.

The Cities Service Plant was fairly clean, but during my first summer there, I found myself sneezing a lot. That was common for me during the summer months in Chicago, especially in August and September, when pollen counts are high. I saw an allergist that first summer who discovered I was allergic to paper dust. He gave me a medication to counter the allergy.

Ironically, later in life I always seemed to work in places where there was a lot of paper and paper dust. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I worked as a writer for R.R. Donnelly and Sons, the world's largest commercial printer, on the Near South Side of Chicago. My office was in the tower of the main printing building, so I was isolated from the paper dust in the main parts of the plant. But when I had to go through the plant, I would sneeze and laugh about it. How can anyone be allergic to paper dust?

My last employer before I retired was The Los Angeles Times. I worked in an office that also was isolated from the printing operation. But there was so much paper in that office that often I would sneeze. I kept my work area as clean as I could, filing papers in cabinets just outside my work area.

By the way, remember when personal computers were introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s? Newspapers and magazines ran one story after another about "the paperless society," a world in which office workers would sit at a clean desk working on their computers. No papers would be in site.

If anything, personal computers have multiplied papers exponentially.

Now that I am retired, I've surrounded myself with several stacks of paper, things I've printed out over the past seven years since I bought my PC. I've stopped printing out as often as I did at first. In fact, I ran out of ink for my printer about five months ago and so far haven't replaced the cartridges.

I've spent the last three days sorting through stacks and stacks of printouts in my home office, shredding as I've gone along. Many papers were dated three to six years ago. I haven't looked at any of them since I printed them.

Thank goodness for my Fellowes Shredder, which I bought five years ago but have rarely used until this week. I paid $39.95 for it. I checked the Fellowes web site yesterday. Most of their shredders today are $299 and up! Why? Who knows? I called Fellowes to find out, but the friendly lady in Chicago with whom I talked said that's just the way it is. She said they still offer a small shredder for about $50, then added that I was very lucky to have the one I have.

So far, I've shredded about two dozen bags of paper.

After all these years, I still find it funny when I touch paper and get a certain tingling sensation. The allergist I saw during these summers in college more than 40 years ago told me that was common among those who are allergic to paper.

Why did I write about all this? I don't know. Perhaps to avoid going through and shredding more papers today. I think I'll wait until tomorrow or later in the week!

George Spink
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Postcript   I ended up shredding enough paper to fill a total of about 40 bags. We made a couple of trips to the Santa Monica Recycling Center and placed them in the proper bin. To avoid going through this again, I have placed the shredder under my computer desk and now shred as I go, something I should have been doing all along....