Stationery - cupboard love

Stationery cupboards are the sweet shops of office life. They're a sort of colourful pick and mix of lots of nice little things that you don't really need but you nevertheless keep helping yourself to them until your desk looks like a small branch of W H Smiths.

Hardback notebooks are top on the list of removables. You use the first page and then lose interest on the second because the paper isn't quite so squeaky clean. Also available are huge hole punchers that could perforate a rhino's scrotum. It's only when you've punched holes through every document within five yards of your desk that you realise the hole spacing is only compatible with filing systems in old Soviet Bloc countries.

Another hot item in the stationery cupboard is highlighter pens. These highlight the useful and important parts of documents and prove that 90% of most documents are neither. 'Things to do' pads go like hot cakes because they give the impression that you're getting organised. Stationery is in fact a work substitute and you'll notice that the first three things you write on your 'Things to do' pad are '1. Highlight documents. 2. Punch holes in documents. 3. Staple documents.'

So much is stolen from stationery cupboards that they have to be protected behind signs which say 'High Voltage. Danger of Death.' Sadly these signs are also stolen and stuck on the desk of volatile managers as a bit of a joke.

There is a certain virgin sweetness about stationery items which is evidenced by people's resistance to reusing old lever arch files marked 'Bought Ledger 1974'. Inevitably, some office workers develop quite a fetish for stationery. It's not unheard of for someone working late to pop into the stationery cupboard and find the Sales Director sitting inside, stark naked, covered head to foot in Post-it notes.

Key learnings:

• No-one has ever come out of a stationery cupboard empty handed
• Except in Saudi Arabia
• Where you can steal from the stationery cupboard a maximum of twice