New and not Note-worthy

There is a new evil in Shanghai. We’re not sure when it arrived, but it’s a scourge. Inflamer of tempers. Destroyer of office equilibrium. Enemy of message taking.

Yes, it’s new-format Post-It Notes. The ones that “concertina” instead of tearing off along one edge.

Why, 3M, why?!

Gone are the days when Shanghaiist, having accidentally bumped a Post-It pad off the desk, could simply reach down and pluck it from the floor again. Now the thing opens like a paper accordion and has us scrabbling under table legs to squeeze it all back together.

And what happened once upon a time when we ran out of Post-It Notes? In the pre-concertina era we shouted across the room at a colleague who, with one deft flick of the wrist, would toss the compact yellow booklet from desk to desk. Try that now and the office ends up looking like it’s just been in a ticker-tape parade.

“Unique fan-folded notes ‘pop-up’ one right after another, with just one hand, down to the very last note,” says one online blurb, almost prompting Shanghaiist to unplug our monitor and hurl it from our 21st-floor window down to busy Zhenning Lu.

Another suggestion we’ve heard is that these new Post-Its are designed for some kind of dispenser. Then how is it that Shanghaiist receives the notes but no nifty dispenser? Who is allowing these vile accordions to be sold independently? Satan, that’s who.

Paper cuts to the eyes of whoever invented these wretched things.

Image from amazon.com.