Paperweights: Unseen Helpers in the Office Workspace

Today, I surprisingly found a paperweight sitting on one of my colleagues’ tables. I went to her and enquired about it. I took that in hand and just checked it.

The same oval shape, a glass one, made with colourful designs inside and a flat base at down side.

She laughed, and she, too, had no idea where she got it from. She said that while searching for old documents, the peon brought it to her along with the old documents.

As a kid, I saw it at a clinic, our family doctor’s place. That was some 30 years back. Our Doc used to have 3-4 paperweights on his table, safeguarding the prescription pad, medical reports from the ceiling fan.

I still remember that family doc’s way of speaking to my parents about my illness, taking that oval paperweight in his one hand and swirling it, while talking to us.

Then times changed, and the paperweights too changed. They used to come in different shapes – square, triangular, and a few with the shape of logos of various pharma products.

That gave paperweights another important task of branding while still doing their primary job as a paperweight.

As I grew up, I saw it in many other places, I saw it in my father’s office, a bank. There used to be so many in that office, almost 3-4 at each desk.

Any place that has fans or places where the work used to happen near the window, a paperweight was a must.

Those paperweights are likely to be a silent productivity improver, not like the AI these days we talk about, but they used to save a lot of time, keeping the documents in one place.

Switch on the fan, and the first people used to look for the paperweight.

But as times changed, like many other things, paperweights also gone off. As fans got replaced with the air-conditioned offices, the weight of these small glass-like things felt heavy, and we disowned that as well.

The things that are of no use always feel like a burden.

Though it is not used these days, we still use it in our discussion, calling someone a paperweight, who just sits idle and does nothing in the office.

We stopped using many things, but whenever we see anything old, it makes us go back to those good old days.