Obsolete Technical Information

One of my employees resigned last week and as his manager it is up to me to go through his office. My primary job is to make sure all of the important information from his projects gets saved while my secondary job is to throw stuff away. This employee has been at the company for 15 years and so he accumulated a lot of technical information.

As I go through the office material, I can't help but think about someone else having to do the same thing for me eventually. I have decided that it is impossible for one to clean his or her own office. I attach to much importance on the most minute detail as I am sure others do as well. I think I would keep stuff that can be thrown out. When it comes to me going through my former employee's stuff, I have no problem tossing most everything.

I am also fortunate in that we have a shredding service to help me with this task. I have a large garbage can with a tiny slit on the top. The lid of the can is secured with a sizeable padlock so once I toss something in, I better not need it back. The only downside to the tiny opening is that I have had to rip several technical manuals for old projects as they were too large to fit in the slot. If I had had to stand in front a paper shredder destroying documents, I would still be there.

One question you may be asking is why am I shredding everything. Simple: it is better to be safe than have to worry about scavengers going through our office garbage cans looking for sensitive information. While most of what I am throwing away is worthless and illegible (I have gone through notebooks filled with chicken scratch and drawings but not a single legible word), I would hate to have missed something that really is sensitive and secret information.

The fun part of my job is that my former employee left a ton of old video games. Games for old consoles that almost nobody plays any more. I sent out an e-mail to the department advertising the free games for anyone interested and soon the collectors arrived. While some games are worthless, there are a few actually worth real money. And here I thought they were obsolete.