Do Fingerprints Count As Confidential Information?

We reorganized the office last weekend. We were able to throw out catalogs and other unnecessary items, and shift desks. When I cleaned off a desk and shelves, which my husband wasn't using, for my own personal space, he decided that he liked it better and moved in. No problem. I just cleared off the desk he had occupied, so that I could finally have someplace to put my ever burgeoning workload (right now I work on a tiny desk in the common area of the house). It turned out so nice that he started to eye it again. Too late. I had already set up shop there.

To keep the kids occupied while we were knee deep in 2007 promotional products catalogs, we asked them to shred a large stack of papers. They have been shredding for years now and are experts in the field. However, we had more than I had thought and it ended up making a humongous mess (after cleaning up, I'm still finding it all over the house). Here is a portion of it:

After a few hours, they pooped out. I took over until the machine decided it was done, too. After big shredding episodes, I like to dispose of every item as I need to rather then piling it on top of the machine. However, my husband failed to receive that memo. It's a pain to do a few pages at a time because we unplug the shredder for safety reasons. So, for one piece of paper, we'd have to plug in the machine, turn it on, shred, turn it off, and unplug it again. (But this takes much less time than the hours devoted to stacks and stacks of documents.) And, once someone puts an item on top of the shredder, it just keeps piling up.

When I took over the task this weekend, I noticed that not everything designated for the confetti maker had personal information on it. I like to shred items with confidential business trademark data, bank statements, or the thousands of credit card applications and checks that we receive. However, as I became entranced by the monotony of my motions, it took me a while to realize that I was shredding shiny fliers that come in bills and other mailings.

I shook off my daze and asked my husband if he had placed these items to be shred. He said that he had. I guess he considers a fingerprint to be confidential personal information. I tried to weed out what didn't need to be there, but, unfortunately, the machine died before I had a chance to ask it's forgiveness. It had overheated--probably in it's anger at having to consume that in which no thief would ever be interested. The next morning, after I had cajoled and convinced it that only the most important intelligence remained, it finally cooled down enough for me to finish.

Order reigns supreme again in our work area! To ensure that it stays that way, I placed a sign on the shredder that reads: "Do Not Place Items Here. Shred Immediately!" I think that will do the trick . . .

. . . until the sign mysteriously falls into the jaws of death and a flier for a free gift from the credit card company shows up in its place.