POST OFFICE DESKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1939, Page 2

POST OFFICE DESKS

THE COST OF “TIDYING UP.” ' Individual expenditure on such minor items as blotting paper and pens might not exceed a few shilling in the year, but the Post Office, with its Dominion wide business, spends a very substantial sum in this way. It has decided to “tidy up” the public desks used for writing telegrams, money-or-ders and other documents, by replacing the bound sheets of blotting paper with neat blotting pads having leatherette corners. An inexpensive thing it might be thought, but to provide these bloters in all public desks means the making of no fewer than 6000, while the constant replacement of the blotting paper will involve, it is estimated, a supply closely approaching one million sheets every year. Pens, a necessary adjunct to the desks, are not by any means a minor items of expenditure in this big public service, where the annual turnover of pen nibs for public use is 120,000, while the annual replacement of peh-hold-ers means the purchase of 30,000. For some years the Post Office provided lead pencils at the public desks and endeavoured io keep them in place by attaching the pencils to a long spring holder. This experiment was not a success mainly owing to the difficulty in maintaining a good writing point on the pencils. The old system has been almost entirely replaced by pen and ink, a more satisfactory -equipment, but’ because of its Dominion-wide distribution, a very expensive one when the daily requirements of hundreds of offices are taken into account.