Paperclip

A paperclip is a piece of wire that has been bent three times and asked to keep things together. It is one of the few household objects whose name is also its instruction manual.^[1]

A paperclip grips whatever sheets are put inside it and assumes that was the plan. It has no way of checking, and has never asked.

Usage

Approximately 0.4% of paperclips are ever used to clip paper.^[2] The remainder are unbent during long telephone calls, used to press tiny buttons that no finger has ever reached, or lost, which researchers now believe is the paperclip's natural state and the thing it was trying to do all along.

Unbending

An unbent paperclip cannot be bent back into a paperclip. It can only be bent into something that looks like it used to be a paperclip, and knows it.

Behaviour

Paperclips left alone in a drawer will, within a week, have joined together into a chain. Nobody has ever seen this happen, and nobody has ever admitted to doing it.^[3]

Bending a paperclip during a meeting is not considered rude. Bending it back is considered optimistic.

See also

• Meeting – where most paperclips are unbent
• Time – what unbending a paperclip passes

References

1. Wire, W. (1988). Bent Three Times. Office Press. pp. 1–3.
2. Staple, S. (2002). “Where Do the Paperclips Go?”. Journal of Desk Studies 4. Question unanswered.
3. Link, C. (2011). “Who Made This Chain?”. Office Mysteries Quarterly 5. Nobody came forward.