Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Wrapping the school notes

2nd June 2010

Recently, Sudha was busy wrapping the notebooks and books of Dhanush. As I was seeing the act, my memories went back to my school days.

In those days, the newspaper used to be the main source of wrapper. The earlier year's calender papers( and many times the same year's calender papers also !) served the purpose.After wrapping, we used சாதம் for pasting the edges ! Then we used to cut white papers with scissors into shapes of rectangle, diamond etc to use them as labels.

Now a days, the children get laminated brown sheets for wrappers and cello tape is very handy for pasting the edges. Transparent plastic sheets are also available which are used for covering the text books. And you get self sticking labels with attractive cartoons or simply with the school name printed . All of these make the job of wrapping very easy and once the work is over, the books and notebooks present an excellent look and highly tempting to use them !

I understand that some schools supply ready cut wrappers to suit a notebook. All you have to do is to wrap it and remove the paper covering the gummed edges and stick the wrapper to the notebook. The job is over in less than a minute !!

Some people take the part time job of wrapping the books and notebooks (in the month of May ) at Rs 5/ per notebook or book. With both the parents going for jobs in many families, naturally there is a heavy demand for such persons . A thriving business indeed .

In my days, We had to go to shops and buy the note books and books ourselves. Many a times, a shop will not have stock and we may have to visit a no of shops or a no of times to get a book. Sometimes we might have to request our relatives at Chennai to buy the book and send it to us. Now a days, the school takes the responsibility and all you have to do is to remit the cost to the school and take delivery of the notebooks and books on the appointed day.

This is a win win situation for both the students and the school. The student gets the notebooks and books at a reasonable rate and without having to runaround for purchasing the same. The school is benefited that it will get commission for all the purchases from the notebook printers and the book publishers. And this is classic example of how we can benefit by avoiding the middleman.