Strokes...from the Penn

It hasn't happened often in the years I've been writing this column, but every once in a while I find myself at a loss for a topic. Fortunately, I can usually count on the consulting world to help me out. This is one of those times. Yet another management consulting firm has produced yet another statistic-and it's a doozy! The average office worker uses 250 pounds of paper and spends 40 to 60 percent of his time creating or working with documents.

Actually, that's two statistics, but I was most intrigued by the latter. If a person spends 40 to 60 percent of his time creating or working with documents, doesn't that also mean that he spends 40 to 60 percent of his time not creating or working with documents? And if 40 to 60 percent of the time is spent not creating or working with documents, what is that time spent doing?

Meetings, you say? Nice try, but when is the last time you went to a meeting where there weren't a stack of documents passed out to the attendees? Phone calls, perhaps? 'Fraid not. You could certainly be involved in a business phone call that required no use of documents, but if you were on the phone 40 to 60 percent of the time (as is a stockbroker, for example), you can be sure that you'd be processing documents along with having those conversations.

Essentially, just about everything done in an office involves documents. If a person has avoided them, he has probably avoided working.

As for the 250 pounds of paper... well it all depends on what they meant. If "uses" means "handles," then the figure is much too low. My junk mail weighs more than that. If "uses" is defined as document creation ... then we should be really glad that we're only working 40 to 60 percent of the time.

Copyright Association of Records Managers and Administrators Inc. Apr 1997
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved