When It’s Time to Break up with Your Shredding Machine

A One-Way Conversation with the Shredding Machine

It’s not you, it’s me.

Wait, that’s not true. It is you. And it’s not working out. We both wanted it to work, and I kept propping up this ineffective relationship by turning a blind eye. But now I have to literally pull the plug and go my own way.

But how did we get to this point?

Cheap Shredding Isn’t

I thought that using an office shredding machine was cheap, but it’s painfully slow, jams constantly, and overheats quickly. I realized that it has become too expensive to maintain. The cost isn’t just related to the machine itself; it takes so many valuable employee hours each month, that the cost has become prohibitive. Not only that, but everyone hates that machine. Frankly, it’s undermining morale.

After doing the real math, using a shredding machine is clearly not cheap. I know I need to do some proper research into alternatives.

Avoidance Just Makes It Worse

It just seems easier to keep turning a blind eye to the shredding issues. You know those relationships where you avoid the issues, pretending they aren’t a big deal because you hate confrontation? That’s how I feel about the shredding machine. Unfortunately, it’s the elephant in the room.

We have a shred-everything policy in place, taking the decision out of it for staff members, but the shredder is noisy, so we put it in a back room where it’s inconvenient to get to. This results in employees hoarding paperwork until they absolutely have to shred it, creating an unacceptable data breach risk as those documents lay on desks and sit in piles. We need to replace the shredder with something far more secure and convenient.

Too Close for Comfort

I remember reading about the FBI raiding lawyer Michael Cohen’s home in 2018 and piecing together shredded documents they found. I thought, if a lawyer’s shredding machine isn’t good enough, why do I think our office supply store machine would be?

Around the same time, I heard about dumpster divers wandering our business park late at night. I actually lost sleep over the possibility of one of those people grabbing a bag of our shredded documents and piecing even one together to steal money, someone’s identity, or proprietary information.

With the knowledge that even a single data breach could result in lawsuits, fines, a damaged reputation, and possibly bankruptcy, I know there has to be a better way.

There Is a Better Way

Wiggins Shredding offers a full suite of secure shredding services to businesses in Pennsylvania and Tri-State Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. We can even provide you with a Certificate of Destruction upon completion of every shredding job in case the auditor comes knocking. Simply give us a call at 610-692-TEAR (8327) or complete the form on this page and we’ll help you get compliant, reduce your data breach risk, and sleep soundly at night.