POST OFFICE DESKS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20735, 20 February 1939, Page 9

POST OFFICE DESKS

COST OF “TIDYING UP” SH --TANTIAL EXPENSE Individual expenditure on such minor Items as blotting paper and pens might not exceed a few shillings in the year, but the Post Office, with ils 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-orders 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, bu: to provide these blotters 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 item of expenditure in this big public service, where the annual turnover for pen nibs alone for public use is 120,000, while the annual replacement of pen-holders means the purchase of JO,OOO. For some years the Post Office provided lead pencils at the public desks and endeavoured to 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 good writing points 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 arc taken into account.