Files (Part 2): Let the Scanning Begin

It's Thursday, and the big boss in the office approaches me to discuss my accomplishments so far.

"Yep, I've just been filing away, taking pieces of paper and transfering them to these rectangular metal cabinets, sometimes in alphabetical order, depending on my mood," I tell him.

"Mmm hmmm, good good. Glad to see that things are going well so far," and then he begins to smile, as if he has good news. "Next week we're gonna mix things up, and start throwing some of the files away."

He pauses and waits for me to thank him for introducing this exciting new wrinkle to my career. What I'm wondering, though, is why I would be filing papers that are destined for the recycling bin anyway. It's like when the manager of the Boston Red Sox shuffles up the batting order. Sure it gives him something to do with his spare time, but wouldn't have been easier just to toss the whole thing away, without wasting time on the order.

I manage to utter, "Good! Nothing will give me more pleasure than throwing these suckers away."

That's true at least. In the span of a week, I have grown to hate the files. These files are not exciting like the X-files (The X section of the filing cabinet is empty), they are boring, boring, boring! All day I put them in alphabetical order, with a sneaking suspicion that I will be the last human to ever read them. Fox Mulder will not uncover these files and make a Fox TV series about them, because there is really nothing interesting in them. A TV show about these files would be called CSI: Bad Files or Law and Order: Especially Uninteresting File Unit (EUFU). Noone would watch them, and they would be cancelled during week two and be replaced with another sequel to Big Brother, which , let's face it, would actually be an improvement.

What I'm trying to say is that filing is not my favorite thing. Imagine my excitement, then, when I came in on Monday, and they told me about my brand new assignment.

"Today you will be scanning," the boss says, and I am giddy with joy. Anything to stop the filing, even if it is scanning.

They sit me down at a computer and tell me how the scanner works. It's pretty basic really, I put a paper in the scanner, press a button, and save it into the computer's hard drive. Then they present me with a massive stack of papers.

"Here are some papers to get you started."

I begin scanning, and decide that it's actually not so bad. Very little physical exertion required, just clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard. No more impossible drawers and walking back and forth. But slowly, the scanning starts getting to me. The scanning program takes an eternity between documents, and the computer seems to be constantly teetering between functioning and crashing. Scanning is even more mindless than filing, because I don't even have to think about the alphabet anymore. I am a robot, putting papers in a machine, and then putting them in a pile on the floor. Truth is, I realize, I hate scanning more than I hate filing.

Looking for some purpose, I ask them, "What exactly is the point of all this scanning?"

The big boss tells me, "We are trying to get all of our records on the computers. We are going to scan all of our documents and eventually get rid of the filing cabinets."

I think about this highly illogical plan. All told I would guess that this company has about one million files stored in their filing cabinets. Each sheet of paper takes about thirty seconds to scan, so working at a steady pace, for eight hours a day, it will take me about three years to scan all their documents. Furthermore, the company is generating hundreds of thousands of files a year, so according to my calculations, I will be scanning until I die.

Furthermore, the big boss undermines the logic of his plan when he tells me to "go ahead and file those scanned papers anway...just to be safe".

"Fine," I say, and head to the cabinets, forgoing any attempt to understand corporate logic. I'm just happy not to be scanning.