Mind the shreddy bits

I recently acquired a scanner and a shredder. This is very nice because, like most people, I love feeding paper into things. Clearly, however, it is important to distinguish the two machines from each other. For example, if I want to both scan and shred something, it's important for me to remember in which order to do these things, because scanning first works much better.

The shredder is the size of a waste basket and sits on the floor. The scanner is the size of a hoagie and sits on my desk. It's not hard to distinguish between them, and one is much more dangerous than the other; in fact it comes with 8 pages of safety instructions, while the other comes with none. However, it's the scanner that rates the safety guide, while there's nothing but a few bold-faced warnings and a half page of bullet pointed cautions in the shredder instructions.

The scanner's safety brochure starts off with a key to the warning labels, one of which, indicates that if you don't follow this particular instruction it may result in "severe injury or death." These sorts of things contain an admonition to stop using the scanner if smoke, heat, or an abnormal noise or smell is coming from the scanner. Getting foreign objects (water, small metal objects, etc.) can also cause injury or death, although I don't really think water is an object. Then at the end of the list "Other problems which indicate a scanner failure are detected" (note that this phrase is grammatically correct although it appears otherwise, the 'are' doesn't refer to the scanner failure, which is an 'is'). I don't know about you but I find this to be overly broad warning. If the paper won't feed into the scanner it may indicate a problem that could result in severe injury or death? Maybe I shouldn't have bought this thing.

Also, the scanner has a little warning label on it, the warning for which reads, this warning label can become very hot. To avoid burns, do not touch this label. Many of the safety warnings regard the use of electricity, something many of us have apparently never done before. Most of these end with "can cause electric shock or fire" and they include handling the scanner with wet hands, leaving it "in a car under scorching heat," using it "while covered with a blanket'," letting your hair, tie or jewelry get caught in it, or using it while driving a car (which I'm pretty sure belongs in the 'severe injury or death' section). There's also the usual stuff about not putting it on the edge of the table because it might fall on you, but I think my favorite one is" When handling documents, be careful not to cut your finger with them." This is always good advice, which applies not only to documents but things like knives, swords, numchuks and chain saws.

The shredder may not require the same detail of instruction because its dangers are perhaps more obvious. Anything they say here, aside from the standard warnings not to put it under water or catch it on fire somehow, have to do with trying to not shred some part of your body. Mostly this means unplugging it before you touch the shreddy bits. My favorite, which is the only repeated instruction, pertains to its awesome CD shredding function. I don't really care for Rihanna, for example, and if I see a CD of hers lying around I might wish to shred it, but, as the instructions note, if I do so I must not hold the CD with finger through the center ring while feeding into the shredder. This is wonderful phrasing, which makes it easy to imagine the consequences of not following that instruction without having to explain them in graphic detail. Many Hollywood directors could learn from this principle. Why one would be shredding even awful CDs like Rihanna's is beyond me however.

I've now had these things for a week, and aside from getting a paper cut (damn, they warned me about that!) I'm still alive and unharmed. I'll let you know if anything more interesting happens or if I decide to shred any CDs.