Perforated paper can be a wonderful thing. From the loo roll to punch-out cards, it can save a lot of time and effort to be able to separate parts of paper without getting out scissors, marking lines, and cutting. I have noticed, though, that often perforations just don’t work.
Many, many years ago my mother bought me some shares in something called the Virtus Total Return Fund. She didn’t tell me that she had done so, and one day I got a statement in the mail. I was, shall we say, confused. I read the title and my brain interpreted it with the context I had, and I saw Virus Total, a Google-owned cybersecurity product consisting of an aggregation of samples of virus code and URLs. Why and how do I have shares in that? Why and how are they paying me a (tiny) dividend? I tore open the envelope and made a mess. It was one of those mailers that has perforated tabs on three sides but I swear that those tabs were carbon-fiber reinforced. It was a horror trying to tear them off. I ended up with scraps of paper with torn edges. I never understood what the Virtus Total Return Fund actually was, though I did quickly realize that it had nothing to do with computer viruses. I also continued to get those curséd statements quarterly, and every single time they caused me great frustration when I tried to open them. So I sold my shares in the awful fund, but somehow I kept getting the awful statements that cannot be opened. I found out that, for some reason, my sell order had left a tiny fraction of a share or such in my account. So I sold that.
I’m still getting the horrid statements. They’re still awful to try to open.
At this point, I figure I’m getting my revenge by forcing them to print and mail a statement to me every quarter just to tell me I have less than a dollar invested in their silly fund.
I know what’s going on. I briefly worked in a print shop so I learned a bit about the steel-rule dies used to die-cut and perforate forms. They’re very expensive. They work great when brand-new, and you demo to the customer from on of the first thousand or so impressions. Then, to save money, you proceed to run maybe fifty-thousand impressions with the same die. And, yes, by compressing the paper with the dulled die you actually make the paper harder to tear at the perf than elsewhere. You save fractions of a cent per impression, and make the consumers of the piece miserable.
When you get an impossible-to-open perforated envelope, or can’t remove that punch-out card without destroying it, or (heaven forbid) cannot get the bathroom tissue to tear straight, remember that someone made a deliberate decision to make your life miserable to save a tiny fraction of a (now-deprecated) penny. And appreciate it when you receive a piece that breaks crisply and cleanly along a well-perfed line.
—2p