Out to Punch

No doubt, there are a lot of useless things you can find by just walking around your standard office environment. Electric staplers, inspirational framed posters, fake office plants, Human Resources – all of these simply take up space. But at one point in your company’s history, these items may have played a pragmatic role in the pursuit of commerce. There had to be a point in existence where you hired a weakling who couldn’t manually affix paper together without the help of something that plugs into the wall. And somebody at one point must have been the slightest bit swayed by a group of skydivers endorsing TEAMWORK. Fake plants? If there ever were to be a intra-office game of Rubber Band Wars to commence, these would provide excellent cover. And HR? Make that H-Arr.

Everyday, I visit the reliable water cooler at least fivefold. It’s an agonizing 23 seconds of di-hydrogen oxide refilling, as our kitchen is largely boring. There’s a copier, and a coffee machine, both rarely used, and with that lack of use, come a lack of people to make small talk with. So my eyes take the time to scan the room for more useless office items, at least to the point in time when the Nalgene bottle I use has reached the brim and my shoes become wet. And time and time again, my gaze hones in on the most useless of things in my office:

The Punch Bowl.

Yeah, sitting there in all its glory on top of our office fridge is a good-sized, frosted glass, brand new looking punch bowl. We’re talking a good two feet in diameter here people. Now I can’t say I’m in the market for a punch bowl, but if I were, I would have to consider this punch bowl as a likely choice. It definitely looks like it can contain brightly-colored standing liquid with the best of them. Too bad it’s never been used.

Turns out I don’t work in a reception hall. Who knew?

Yes, as long as I can remember we’ve had that punch bowl nestled up on that fridge when it should really be somewhere else where it fits in better – on a bridal registry, perhaps. Now I’ve been here nearly four years and never have I seen this punch bowl put to use, either proper or improper. While slightly surprising, fruit punch hasn’t been able to crack into the Office Beverage Stalwart Duo of Coffee and Water to date. Maybe it’s because we have a fear of having to spend on petty cash on wall repair.

So what does one do with this discovery? Well, I could probably just dispose of said bowl, but no doubt and impromptu luau would be planned that would request its use – that’s irony, folks. And there’s no way I’m actually going to fill it with punch – Lord knows that sharing food (or in this case, a ladle) could be an epidemic waiting to happen. And I don’t have the money in our facilities budget to hire a temp employee with the job title of “Stirrer.” So it’s time we get creative, use everything we can in our offices, and become more efficient that Donovan McNabb against the Cowboys.

So here are my two suggestions:

1) Inbox – Everyone has an inbox, and if you can find it on your desk, you’re just not that busy. However, inboxes are often designed to be only a few inches tall. A few thick invoices come your way and it’s overflow city. So why not use the punch bowl as my new inbox? It has a bigger target, so that it will collect paper and, by the power of gravity, condense it at the bottom of the bowl. It’s also much taller than my current inbox, which judging from the paper explosion that is my desk, might come in handy.

2) Fish Bowl – While we may have fake plants, there is a severe lack of pets in this working environment. Why not take one of the empty cubes and have an aquarium? I’d probably keep the electric stapler far, far away from our little oceanic display, but a few little fishies could add more color than some fake plants, inspire better than a dopey poster, and make the pirates feel right at home. Of course, this is an open-air punch bowl, which makes it hard to clean, and I’m not sure if a can get a concave water filtration system. Eh, if not I can always re-assign our “stirrer.”