Preliminary Findings on Home Office Supply Hoard

Field Notes: Preliminary Findings on Home Office Supply Hoard Audit Period: December 2021

Scope

This audit covers office supplies currently in residence at the home office. The audit was initiated after the auditor was unable to locate a working pen during a phone call and subsequently found three pens in a location where pens are not stored. A broader review was determined to be warranted.

Pen Inventory

The auditor has forty-seven pens. Eleven of them write. The location of the eleven functional pens is not documented.

The auditor cannot determine when the non-functional pens were last used, which would establish whether they were functional at their last use and have since degraded, or were not functional and were retained through inertia alone. Both scenarios are represented in the inventory and cannot be distinguished without testing each pen individually, which is a task the auditor has deferred.

Sticky Notes

Seven partially used pads of sticky notes. Three of the seven have lost adhesive on the top third of each note, meaning notes must be placed on the lower portion of the pad to adhere. The auditor is aware of this and continues to use these pads.

Two pads are the large format. The auditor does not use the large format. They were included in a bulk purchase for reasons that are no longer operative.

Finding 1: The Acquisition Pattern

Supplies were acquired over a period beginning in early 2020, when the home office became the only office and supply adequacy felt important. The acquisition continued past the point at which adequacy was achieved. This pattern is documented but its cessation mechanism has not been identified.

Finding 2: The Storage Problem

Supplies are stored in three locations: the designated supply drawer, the upper shelf of the closet, and a bag that was purchased for a specific purpose and repurposed as overflow storage when that purpose lapsed. The bag's contents are not fully catalogued.

Finding 3: The Functional Pen Location Problem

Eleven functional pens exist. They are distributed across all three storage locations and two additional locations that are not storage locations. There is no reliable method for locating a functional pen at the moment one is needed without checking all five locations in sequence.

Governing Absurdity

A home office supply hoard exists to ensure that supplies are available when needed. The hoard is large enough that finding the correct supply requires more time than it would if the hoard were smaller and organized. The hoard has created the problem it was assembled to prevent.

Contradiction

The auditor will not discard the non-functional pens. They will be relocated to a common location during the next desk reorganization, which will occur when the auditor can no longer find a functional pen at all.

Status

Preliminary. No remediation scheduled.