I was tidying up a bit around my place when I got a little bit derailed. I took a couple of sheets over to my shredder and tried to put them through the slot. Things wouldn’t budge. I tried switching the thing to reverse to see if it would spit something out, but nothing came out. Once again, I switched it out of reverse and tried to feed it a sheet. Still nothing. I thought I’d somehow broken the machine. Upon closer examination the thing was thoroughly clogged. So, I decided to open up the shredder and see if there was something I could do about it.

Generally, I’m not the type of person that really likes taking machinery apart just to see how things work. Sure, the guts of a machine can be interesting, but really I just expect things to work when expected, know what I mean? I wonder how the heck I ever got into engineering with that attitude, eh? Anyway, it took me a while to open the shredder up because there were unexpectedly a couple of screws hidden under stickers. When I got it open, it became obvious that the thing wasn’t just clogged–it was well and thoroughly obstructed. In the slot, I could see a dam of shredded paper jamming the thing, basically preventing the rolls from spinning at all. How did it get to that point? Well, I think a little while ago I switched the machine to reverse, just to see if something would get spit out. After a while, nothing. However, seeing what happened, I figure that the reverse motion picked up a pile of the shredded paper and jammed it up top. Well, of course, in retrospect that was a horrible idea. I guess that reverse setting is really only meant for emergencies. Seems silly when I say that, but at this point I see no other purpose.

Anyway, since the slot is thin I wasn’t able to fish out any of the paper with just my fingers. Nearby I spotted a thin allen key, so I used that to dig in and hook out as much paper as I could get. For the next half hour I was fishing out tiny shreds of paper. The paper was really lodged in there. It wouldn’t come out that easily. The strips were flying everywhere; a few even hit me in the eye. The end result was a mess on the carpet. How stupid, eh?

What’s the lesson here? Well, I guess the point is that I should know better than to use machinery for a purpose other than that intended. Secondly, I seem more than capable of taking shit apart without breaking it when I put my mind to it. Thirdly, I need to empty the damn shredder.