Good staples, bad staples

Have you ever had the opportunity to staple lots of things together? For example assignments, homework, reports, et cetera? How many times did the trusty stapler jam on you while you had to meet that deadline?

One, twice, three time a lady...

Oops, brain malfunction again. Anyway, before you start to curse the stapler for those jammed staples you had to dig out, have you thought about the quality of the staple itself? Not all staples are made equal. I give you exhibit A:



See the staples on the left? Those are staples that came from a not-so-high-quality brand. Yes they are cheap, so now you know WHY they are cheap: it would seem that they did not spend much money on quality control. First of all, the staple magazine (err... I don't now what to call that row of staples) is misaligned. Secondly, the glue that they used to hold that row together is quite weak. so if you knock that magazine hard enough, it will start to crumble and fall apart, sending staples falling to their doom... (and also wasting staples).

The office denizens where I work have had to endure the agony of using those kinds of staples, and I can tell you the lost production caused by jammed staplers is not worth the few Ringgit saved by buying cheap staples. I marked the staples above to make sure I did not accidentally use them.

Here's another look at the staples:



See? They're not even the same height! Another thing that caught my attention was that the packaging for the staples are quite similar, right down to the placement of certain words and colour. Are they trying to confuse the consumers?

So, if you are buying staples, do take a closer look at the staples. Oh ya, the staples on the right are from Max (and no, I am not paid by them to mention their name, move along...).