If I had a laminator at work, I would have laminated my co-workers' car keys and occasionally small components of their lunch.

I have a laminator at work and use it often for personal stuff. I have laminated:

-covers of handbound booklets and recipe books to give as gifts
-some pieces of emphemera which I wanted to be more durable - concert ticket stubs, some vintage Christmas-gift tags my family used to use and re-use
-autumn leaves (they do fade over time, though) and pressed flowers for bookmarks
-table tents for event dinners
-figures to cut out for a mobile
-cartoons and joke signs for around the office

When I was in an office with a laminator and plenty of those credit card sized pouches I made kick ass luggage tags.

If I had a laminator at work, I would have laminated my co-workers' car keys and occasionally small components of their lunch.

Haaa! I love it! I wish I worked with you.

I'm going to laminate stuff that belongs to other people now. We also have this supercool pneumatic tube thingy in which you can send stuff between two stations on different floors in the office. I think I'm going to laminate hard candy and send it downstairs in tubes.

Luggage tags is a great idea too! My daughter would love some; she travels a lot. I need to get a larger laminator so I can do books and leaves too, Miko. What is a table tent?

Do your own mini cards for a polyorama, like interrobang's.

I think I'm going to laminate hard candy and send it downstairs in tubes.

Awesome. You should totally hand out laminated candy for Halloween next year just to see the confusion and frustration on the kids' faces.

We have one here, too and I never play with it enough. Hmmmmm. All I ever do with it is vaguely think about making my son a fake ID and then decide, nah, that's probably not really being a good mother, is it? ;-)

In one of my schools, there is a laminated necktie on the wall of the IMC.

Some teacher was running some stuff through and his tie caught. Now, I have investigated and cleaned up after a couple grievous injuries regarding machinery.

But this, his tie just got sucked in and of course the machine was not stong enough to pull him in. So they had to cut it off (the tie) and he got razzed big-time about it.

But yeah, laminators are our friend!

Here's a shady tip for good use of a laminator:

Museums let the press in for free, at least in NY. You don't have to be a NY member of the press; you can be a reporter, editor, etc. from anywhere.

Design yourself a press pass -- either make up a newspaper or make one for an unknown publication that museum workers and other officials are not likely to see.

You'll get into museums for free, get better spots at concerts, you can even use it to try to get backstage at certain places. Oh. And you can get into the Empire State Building free, too.

(Note: I've never made a fake press pass because I've always had a real one. Until now. Sigh.)

We also have this supercool pneumatic tube thingy in which you can send stuff between two stations on different floors in the office.

COOL! I love those things. They're so steampunk! As a kid I used to have so much fun going to the drive-up at the bank with my mom to deposit her check. She used to let me let the little tube go into the big tube. Awesome.

I think I'm going to laminate hard candy and send it downstairs in tubes.

Let us know how that goes. It seems like the candy would have too much diameter to make it smoothly between the rollers, if, indeed, your laminator has rollers like this one does

Mine is flat. I might be able to laminate fruit leather or beef jerky, but not hard candy.

I laminated sticks of gum. It mooshed a little but still looks like gum. For some reason this strikes me as completely hilarious. I also printed out little strips of paper with people's names on them and laminated them with the gum, so each piece of gum wass for a specific person. I sent them down in the tubes. Everyone is getting a huge kick out of it. So far in return, in the tubes, I've anonymously gotten a Kit Kat, a strip of pretty ribbon (which I will probably laminate...heeehee), a funny drawing, a thank you note, and 2 pennies. Which I will also probably laminate.

Why can't i send things for lamination? Where are my tubes to iconomy?

If you wife has spent days on the phone wrangling with an insurance company to get them to fax an important document to you, and it finally arrives on your fax machine (which uses thermal paper), do not laminate it for safekeeping.

Where are my tubes to iconomy?

God, if it had been ME with that comment, I'd have gotten in BEEG TROUBLE.




(Not that I haven't THOUGHT it.)

I wanna play with the laminator! (When I worked in an office we used to refer to it as THEEEE LAMINATOOOORRRR in a gruff, Japanese-cartoon-evil-character/WWF voice. At least I did.)

Hah elizard...we do that with our shredder. It's DA SHREDDAAAAAA!

(hehe dan - I don't think you would get in trouble here, at least not from me)

I wish I had a laminator. *sulk*

I remember the tubes, tho'. Banks had them and the JCPenney we went to had them as well. That memory is vaguer, but I think the floor personnel would send money to the main office if their tills had too much money in them.

But this, his tie just got sucked in and of course the machine was not stong enough to pull him in. So they had to cut it off (the tie) and he got razzed big-time about it.
Heh, we have a special place at work for things like this. It has a sign (laminated, of course) pronouncing it as the "Wall of shame and embarrassment" and is plastered with speed camera notices people have got in department cars, jaywalking tickets, warning notices for not having a ticket on the train, notices about who did stupid things at various times (one refers to a female staff member going out to a client wearing odd shoes and not even noticing, another is a printed out map showing how someone got sucked into paying $10 for a cab to go from the airport to a hotel that was clearly visible next door to the airport terminal), the boss's cut-up corporate credit card after she spent weeks trying to get it and then invalidated it 15 seconds after it arrived by screwing up the activation process, stuff like that. Yes, we are immature and small-minded, but it's all in good fun.

I wish we had those tube things, but we would probably end up using them only to send lollies and dirty notes to each other anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

iconomy, I wish you worked at my place, you would fit in perfectly with the wicked sense of humour that its the only thing that stops us all from going mad because our actual work is so confrontational.

dg, one must have a very thick skin to work where you work.

We are accountable for our work, but it is usually in the background. The only things that would get me fired are stealing or lying.

I would hate for my fuckups to be posted on the wall like that, even if they were laminated.

Oh, anyone can remove things that embarrass them and nobody would put something up there if they thought the person would be truly embarrassed by it. It's all very consensual and friendly fun-poking.

Yes, we do need a thick skin to work here, but not for reasons related to The Wall. We are required to take all sorts of bad treatment from "clients" and come up smiling and happy on the outside, so we tend to vent about it in the office - this is just one of our coping mechanisms.