I hate running out of staples in the middle of stapling huge stacks of stuff at work. Call me lazy, but I hate having to stand up and raid the supply cabinet for staples when I just got on my stapling groove.
It doesn’t even have to be a huge stack. Sometimes, you just run out of staples at the most inopportune times and it’s annoying. (Yes, I know, it’s a first-world problem.) The solution? ALERT Staples. Obviously, they’re just like your regular staple wires, except the ones at the end are painted red. That way, you’ll know ahead of time that you’re about to run out of staples and can have some extra ones on standby.
Just make sure you insert the staples into the stapler the right way, otherwise you’ll go through the red alert staples first, which kind of misses the entire point.
Aside from seeing red staples on your documents, you can also check the side of the stapler to see how far you are from the ALERT staples.
The ALERT Staples are a concept design by Wei-Ling Hsu, Yu-Ren Lai and Cyuan-Yi You. They’re not available in stores yet, but you can probably hack your own staples at home using a red Sharpie.
[via Yanko Design]