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March 05, 2008

The Copy Shop Conspiracy

Yesterday, I was at a certain business that makes photocopies. It struck me that all of the people working there were quite short. There's nothing wrong with being short, of course; as my Mum is fond of saying, "Good things come in small packages". It was just that the large grouping of people of very below average height caught my attention. It was statistically unusual. What events transpired to create a situation where all of these non-tall people ended up working at the same place?

Were they hired by a human resources person with a predilection for people of shorter stature?

Is being vertically efficient a bona fide occupational qualification for working in a copy shop?  As a person of above-average height would I be refused a position if I applied to work there based on the grounds that I would have further to lift when I moved boxes of paper and further to bend when clearing paper jams out of the copiers increasing my chances of accident and personal injury?

At one time, were they taller but prolonged exposure to bleached paper, photocopy toner and ultraviolet rays somehow conspired to gradually shrink them?

Occam's Razor tells me that the simplest solution is usually the best.  Could it be nothing more than pure coincidence?  Or is there something else going on?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Which copy shop is it? I'm not just asking out of idle curiosity; I'd like to avoid this establishment in the future. I'm 6'1" and I can't tell you how frustrating it is to deal with people under 5'9".

Meandering Michael said...

Tallish person, they may be of below-average height, but they're quite nice when you get to know them. Really, they're just like you and me - except shorter.

As for which copy shop it is, you'll know it when you're there - It's that obvious (unless all of the copy shops in town are like that and then, I fear, we are dealing with a bigger situation than I ever imagined).