'Extreme Office Crafts' by Jimmy Knight & Tom Chalmers
Creative and devious ways to waste office supplies and company time
By Liz Schroeter
Published: April 27th, 2007 | 8:52am
Lark Books, $9.95, 128 pages
There’s little else in my work day quite as enjoyable as goofing off, especially when I can lure fellow coworkers in on the fun and maybe stick it to the man by wasting office supplies while I’m at it. Thankfully, I don’t work for “the man” but rather for a nice small company that was happy to let me misuse some office supplies to test out Jimmy Knight and Tom Chalmers new playtime guide, Extreme Office Crafts. In fact, the boss even kicked in for some pizza!
In preparation for our Extreme Crafts Pizza Party, I read through Knight and Chalmers’ book for just the right crafts to test out in my own office. Clearly the majority of the crafts in the book are more for laughs than something you might actually dare to create (Packing Tape Skirt — “a quick end to a sticky situation”), and some are adorable albeit ridiculous (The Executive Tiffany Lamp — “Give your desk a glowing sense of grandeur with the transformational power of file flags”).
After browsing the 112 colorful pages of office crafts and games, my coworkers agreed that one of the more practical ideas in the book is the Tavern on the Sly in which one turns several three-ring binders into a cover for a cubicle mini bar. I suppose that says something about my fellow employees… We’d also long since discovered the playful power of canned air, used to clean crumbs out of your keyboard or, as Knight & Chalmers suggest, to play hockey with a balled up meeting agenda.
Since Photoshopping pictures of each other’s heads onto weird images and emailing them around the office is a popular pastime here, I decided to lead my coworkers in making Memo Face Clamps (“Here’s a creative way to interact with your fellow employees without actually having to talk to them”). In this craft, one prints out a photo of a coworker’s head, glues it to an index card, then super-glues it to a pair of binder clips creating a decorative memo-holding device that sits on your desk. This would have worked out OK if super-glue were an easier medium to work with. Or if my super-glue hadn’t glued itself shut. We wound up unsuccessfully Elmer’s gluing a picture of the office puppy to some wrong-sized binder clips, then giving up and just eating pizza and laughing at other wacko craft ideas like the Personal Haz-Mat Suit (a suit made of bubble wrap perfect for cleaning old lunches out of the fridge).
Even though our office was a little under-supplied in necessary Extreme Office Craft items like rubber stamps, brads, cone-shaped paper cups (from the water cooler) and receipt spindles (who has those?), we still thoroughly enjoyed laughing at the jokey projects and especially at the hilariously corporate-looking and straight-faced photographs that accompany each craft and game idea. Few of the projects are probably worth actually creating, but for anyone who appreciates dry office humor, this book is a hoot. Pick one up for your break room!
Issue #26
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