Personally Yours: Paper clips? Nah, the CFO should cut back on flacks

Ft. Myers News-Press - February 01, 2010
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From the Ft. Myers News-Press
By Dan Warner

Paper clips are among my favorite office supplies.

Paper clips, rubber bands and rulers, although a ruler - with which you can measure, draw a straight line and slice paper without jagged edges - is in a different category because you only need one. You need many paper clips and many rubber bands. I have a 3-inch ball of rubber bands of various hues. I know because I measured the diameter with my ruler.

I have two boxes of 300 paper clips in my News-Press desk and two boxes in my home office desk. I received them as Christmas presents a year ago, along with the rubber band ball. Great gifts! It is seriously comforting to know you are not going to run out of either clips or bands at a critical moment.

It is a level of comfort I suspect is shared by the 2,000 employees of the Florida Office of Financial Services, which goes through $200 million a year in total expenses.

It was revealed this week, via a press release written by one of the office's four public relations staffers, that the financial services people have 537 pounds of paper clips. That's 400,000 individual clips - 200 for every employee.

The point of the news release was that Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who must not like her job because she really wants to be governor, has so many paper clips and their ilk that she has ordered a halt to buying "non-mission-critical" office supplies.

She estimates, according to Communications Director Kyra Jennings, that cutting out buying the paper clips and such will save $200,000 a year, or about a tenth of a percent. And she has called on all of Florida government offices to do the same, claiming a potential savings of $14 million.

For years now, I've had a little contest with myself. I keep track of the paper clips that come in from people who send me papers clipped together versus the ones that go out on papers I clip together. It is a running total. I am always ahead. Right now, I have four clips in the in/out bin in my drawer - meaning I am up by four - and a whole bunch more on papers I have yet to unclip. I have never even opened the two boxes of 300.

That is cost-saving at its most efficient. The business office of The News-Press should give me an award.

I suggest Alex Sink do the same and I have an idea:
Clip two pieces of paper together, and mail them to her at:
Alex Sink
200 East Gaines St.
Tallahassee FL 32399

If that fails, she could cut her communications department, which has been reduced to writing press releases about paper clips. That would save $235,000 in salaries alone - and the rest of the finance department's 1,996 employees could buy new clips with impunity.

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