Office Equipment Blog from Office Zone

Just a quick note about our trade show banner stands. We often get phone calls from desperate marketing and sales professionals who need a banner stand for a pending trade show. In fact, it’s not uncommon to get a phone call from someone who’s already at the trade show and they need a banner stand ASAP!

Office Zone offers expedited, overnight shipping on most banner stand models. You can view our entire selection of banner stands here. Our banner stands and pop-up displays are the perfect choice when you need a professional-looking presentation or trade show display.

We have several display stands available in varying sizes, shapes and styles–from table top models to large, adjustable floor models. Be sure to take a closer look at our banner stand collection today!

Creating your own business cards in-house is a simple process, thanks to relatively inexpensive business card cutters offered by Office Zone. Business card cutters save you the expense of outsourcing your business cards to a professional print shop. One highly popular model with our customers is the CardMate Business Card Cutter. The CardMate is inexpensive and requires no electricity whatsoever. You actually operate it with a hand crank.

The CardMate can cut to size about 60 business cards in a minute. On the professional grade side, Office Zone offers the Intimus GC208 Business Card Cutter. This beauty can cut up to an amazing 18,000 professional-grade business cards in one hour!

The GC208 was engineered with a no-mess function that automatically sends unwanted trimmed strips into a waste bin. This impressive business card cutter is low-maintenance and compatible with most business card design software including: Illustrator, Word, Quark and InDesign.

There are three great mysteries involving codes: Is there really a Di Vinci Code? Are bar codes a government conspiracy? And why aren’t there any famous dudes named Cody?–it’s a fairly popular name, I’d think one would attain celebrity status.

Government conspiracy or not, bar codes are immeasurably valuable. Anyone who was ever in line when a store’s scanning system went down knows how much longer it takes to arrive at a total by hand–even with a calculator. Contrary to what I thought as a kid, bar codes are not placed on products in a warehouse in some obscure city by someone working directly for the devil himself (at least not the Devil part anyway). Anyone with the right machine can label and code their own products and they don’t, as far as I can tell, have to put a number, computer chip or any other identifying mark anywhere in their bodies.

Bar codes save huge amounts of time. Our machines allow the user to easily type and print labels as well as create bar codes that are just as easily read as they are made. Check out Office Zone’s Ksun Label And Bar Code Printer and let me know what you think. Maybe someone can even tell me why they’re called bar codes. I mean, one of the only places where you don’t use them is in a bar. Please enlighten me if you have responses to my profound observations.

Taylor

Disasters don’t wait for victims to get off work before they strike. Employers should treat the potential for an emergency in the office like they would in their own homes. I have compiled some good ideas and bad ideas for office preparedness.

Good idea: Take preventative action where you can. Require identification tags for anyone in any restricted area. Have cameras and recorders installed in high-risk or vulnerable areas.

Bad idea: Make everyone wear cameras and place identification tags on all vulnerable areas.

Good idea: Keep enough 72-hour kits on hand for an emergency shut-in situation.

Bad idea: Replace 72-hour kits with 72′, model Corvette kits.

Good idea: Encourage employees to receive first-aid training so they can use a 72-hour kit on someone else if they need to.

Bad idea: Encourage employees to receive combat training so they can take a 72-hour kit from someone else if they need to.

Good idea: Try to anticipate and be prepared for every possible scenario; plan for the worst.

Bad idea: Purchase harpoons, missiles, or similar items to defend yourself against colossal lizards, gorillas, and/or Cloverfields. (If any of these kinds of creatures turn out to be real and destroy your business, send the bill to Office Zone, Attn: Taylor Morgan)

Good idea: Employ a professional to advise colleagues about emergency signs, procedures, exits and all safety protocol.

Bad idea: Employ a psychic to advise colleagues about apocalyptic obliteration, alien invasions, unstoppable biochemical outbreaks, and all world-ending devastations. Our emergency 72-hour kits are top-of-the-line, but still not equipped to handle things of this nature. In the event of such an occurrence, emergency preparedness is futile, and bystanders are encouraged to panic hysterically; it might be the only time that this course of action is just as good as anything else.

Be ready; not just for insurance purposes, but because your employees and their families deserve it. Disasters happen everywhere. What the employer does to prepare can make all the difference in the world–just ask the families of the trapped coal miners from Utah.

Taylor

Dumpster diving can be dramatically more prolific now than in the days when identity theft was not a serious problem. People still find items, I’m sure, that they consider treasures in spite of being someone else’s trash. However, for the most part, if you see someone looking through the garbage, they’re either trying to find something they’ve misplaced, or they’re trying to find financial records to steal a person’s identity. The best way for anyone to protect themselves against identity theft is to use a paper shredder to destroy all private documents. Still, most places in America do not have any formal dumpster diving laws so the responsibility falls entirely upon the one doing the disposing, as opposed to anyone who might witness the non-criminal act of removing paper from the recycling bin or waste receptacle. My question is “Do you think dumpster diving should be a federal crime, and if so, punishable to what extent?”

Please express your thoughts.

Taylor

Imagine your business does 100 transactions with monetary currency per day (or don’t imagine it does, if yours happens to do exactly 100 every day, but keep reading anyway). If every transaction was short a dime, by the end of one year, your cash losses would total $3650–enough money to buy a coin counter that could suit you even if your business was on the Las Vegas Strip and still have enough left over to ride The Stratosphere 30 consecutive times (We strongly recommend you get the coin counter; we strongly recommend you don’t ride The Stratosphere 30 consecutive times).

Basically, every business needs two kinds of money counters: the human kind and the machine kind. Both have features that the other can’t mimic. The human kind calculates, researches and audits. The machine kind never adjusts its figures to benefit itself.

When dealing with pocket change, being wrong once is not a problem; being wrong once every half-hour, all day long–which can happen with the human kind, not the machine kind– is a very expensive problem. Coin counters are the best way for businesses to be exact, right down to the last penny. I’m not sure what the best way is to ensure exactness with the other kind of counter. Perhaps hire the one that’s the most like a machine… oops, I forgot we were talking about accountants–that could be a very difficult task.

Taylor

Statistics prove that over 100% of employees are unhappy with their current time clock system (margin of error: 100%). It’s probably not that bad, but if your time clock was the model that replaced the large-fanged, prehistoric bird from The Flinstones, perhaps the time has come for IT to be replaced. When a time clock malfunctions, the repercussions can be extremely frustrating for the employees. It’s no coincidence that most people’s payment due dates on their bills coincide with their paydays. Often times, if someone’s pay check is a day late–which usually translates to the following week, being a Friday–their bill payment or payments won’t clear. When that occurs, a “service fee” for insufficient funds is added to their account. These fees run the employee, who was not acting irresponsibly, anywhere from $20 to $30 for every check that isn’t covered. Even people with “overdraft protection” of some kind are required to pay a “transfer fee” of six to ten dollars.

A time clock malfunction is also taxing on the department–generally accounting–charged with correcting the problem. Overtime hours that ought to be spent otherwise, are wasted calculating figures that should be automatic. If this department has to guess or rely on the employees’ memories, the process can also be financially burdening. So get a new time clock for your store or office. Put the old one by the entrance and mark it “solicitor check-in.”

Taylor

Envelope openers or “envelopeners,” as I call them, are extremely useful in an office setting, particularly to companies that receive large quantities of mail. Monkeys, on the other hand, have been proven to be less effective in a “white collar” environment. Some envelope openers can prepare 350 letters for reading in one minute. Ten monkeys would be able to destroy 350 letters beyond recognition in one minute. Our machines safely and evenly cut envelopes without damaging the contents. Again, ten monkeys would be able to destroy 350 letters beyond recognition. Our envelope openers are of the highest quality and guaranteed to be priced lower than anywhere else. Primates of any species are expensive to care for and difficult to acquire; not to mention the cost of all the fines that would inevitably be imposed for employing ten of them. We have both manual and automatic machines with a variety of time-saving features. Opening letters with your hands is tiring and often results in paper cuts. Using the unsharp, dagger-looking device might get old fast but there’s nothing speedy about the way it does its job. Envelope openers, especially the automatic machines, enable office personnel to attend to more substantial things than opening letters (which is anything unless your job is to prove O.J. Simpson’s innocence). Besides, monkeys use their hands to open their mail–humans should use technology.

Taylor

In the world of construction, materials such as insulation, stucco and even some types of concrete are considered “foam.” Most of us hear that term and think of beer or rabid animals (notice OR as opposed to AND–never combine beer with rabid animals). Anyone who has ever tried to cut foam (in the industrial sense) with a conventional tool knows why Michelagelo never used it to sculpt anything. If he had, “David” would probably look like Jabba the Hut. Fortunately, home improvers and home builders alike no longer need to use their knives and saws to try to shape awkward blocks of foam–economy-size, insulation-slicing foam cutters deliver perfectly even cuts every time. Our foam cutters are the strongest, lightest (relative to mass), and most durable systems on the market. (“On the market” means “in the world, that we know of.” The government might have a nuclear cutter that penetrates interstellar foam from asteroids.) We guarantee we have the lowest prices and the highest quality, so whether its for home or work or both, you can stop trying to defy the laws of nature and renovation and start using the machine that was created to do that job.

Taylor

Question:

Do you have a machine that will take an 8-1/2 x 11 document, fold it in half and seal it for mailing. Staples are not an option. What comical equipment if any would you recommend.

Thomas L.

Answer:

Yes, we have folding/sealing machines that can handle that for you. You may find several models on this page.

Paper folders/sealers are paper folding machines designed for high-volume letter folding and envelope/document sealing. These letter folders can fold letters, form them in self-adhesive envelopes, and then seal the envelopes. Please keep in mind that the paper you are using must have some sort of adhesive (glue) on it in order for this to work for your application.

Folding paper and then sealing it shut is a rather simple process with these paper folding machines. They are ideal for direct mailing jobs, monthly billing statements, invoices, bank mailings … you name it.