If I ask nicely, will you shred today?

I am not going to waste time or space writing the specs of this shredder, as you can read them in other reviews, who actually LIKE the product. If you can't already tell, this shredder is not my favorite.

For the first few weeks, the shredder worked fine for the needs of our office. We have high-volume shredding, but this shredder claimed to be able to handle that. Along with staples. Neither fact is true.

When researching shredders for purchase, I was not fond of this one. It looked a little cheapie, and the collection bin was not as big as others. In an effort to save money, my boss firmly requested that I buy this one, as it was not the cheapest, but was far from the most expensive. That is a day I live to regret. If I had fought harder for my choice, I would have saved myself many migraines and hand-cramps from cutting large stacks of confidential trash into bits small enough to be un-pieceable.

It started one day when the piece of equipment wouldn't work at all. Odd, we had not had it for very long, so I knew we couldn't have blown the motor already. After checking that it was plugged in, and was in the ON position, I tried again. Nothing. That sucks. Okay, now I was A little frustrated. I pushed it back under the desk with my foot, and I heard the motor start! What? There's no paper in there, why is it working NOW? Who cares, it was working, so I hurriedly pulled it from under the desk and put the papers in the feed slot. Silence. Are you kidding me?!!! Apparently not, as I tried EVERYTHING to get it to turn back on, if even for a moment, but with no luck. Cursing its very existence, I once again used my foot to slide it under the desk. Whrrrr... Ok, who's messing with me? I looked around, but nobody was near or peeking around a corner, snickering. I removed my foot from the front of the machine and the noise stopped. I put my foot back. Whrrrrr. Riiiiight.

Long story short, every time we wanted to shred, we had to lean our foot against the collection bin to hold it farther in for it to work. I tried taping it, so don't ask. On top of the suckiness of having to hold it in, the shredder was under MY desk, so when somebody needed to shred something I had to explain to them, then SHOW them how to get it to work, before THEY could successfully shred. Wonderful.

Although complaints were lodged by my co-workers and myself, my boss would not replace the "pretty new" shredder until it died. Nor would she let me send it back to the manufacturers for repair or replacement. "As long as it still shreds, we can deal with it." Easy for HER to say, she put all of her shred material in a box labeled "TO SHRED" which was emptied by yours truly!!

The real kicker is the amount of time it took for the stupid thing to actually die!! For the next YEAR I robotically moved my foot to the base of the piece of crap before shredding. We had a party when it died, and I was allowed the honor of chucking it. I thought about waiting a day so that I could bring a baseball bat to destroy it first, but the joy of heaving it into the dumpster sufficed.

The moral of this story is, if it acts up, just break it, then you can get a new one!!
P.S. I kissed the guy who eventually overloaded the machine, and we are now happily married with two children! Thank you, crappy shredder!