FATHER P. CLIP

Bringing hope, peace and unity to the good brethren of business supplies

The good Father has to stop himself from turning into an office supplies conspiracy theorist whilst getting frustrated by everything being out-of-stock

can’t get enough of those out-of-stock blues, the out-ofstock blues are what I always choose.” Remember that song by the old stationery blues guitarist Blind Lemon Hole Punch and the Staples Brothers?

My dad used to sing it to us every night as he tucked us all into bed and read us the latest back-order reports. I’d like to read them to my children too (not that I have any as I’m a priest… no, honestly!) but I’d have them up half the night.

I’m not sure if it’s Brexit, or COVID, or the suppliers just not buying anything, but every day we have customers asking when their goods are going to arrive. We have the chilled customers who accept that they won’t have their paper until the middle of next week, and we have the less chilled people who act as if someone is going to die because they don’t have staples.

The quiet ones are the ones you have to watch out for though - beware the quiet ones! They’re the ones who are ringing around other dealers, checking if they have the product instead, ready to switch allegiance at any time. Sometimes they can appear friendly and interested via email - but as soon as they’ve stopped typing their reply they’ll be on the blower to ‘Perfect’ office supplies, getting them cheaper and getting another box free.

Where are these ‘perfect’ office supplies companies getting their goods from? Are they making them? Or are they in cahoots with the suppliers to give them the goods first? Better not to think too deeply about it for fear

of becoming a real office supplies “I conspiracy theorist. There will always be this sort of customer who, no matter how much you look after them, will flirt with other dealers continually, order from them occasionally, and spend more time thinking about office supplies than we do! How do these people justify their wages? The fact that they save their companies 25p per month surely doesn’t warrant the amount of time they spend looking at our products. I often think that these people secretly want to be in our industry and are, ultimately, very jealous of our marvellous and exciting world. Maybe we should offer them a job. They would probably be better at buying and at least they could spend their time actually being productive!