Old papers

As a business, HMRC requires us to keep all our paperwork for seven years. Up until last year, the simplest way to comply was to simply keep everything and never throw anything away. As part of adhering to GDPR, though, we decided we ought to throw away everything we weren't required to keep.

As a company director, the seven year rule applies to me personally, too. I didn't apply our GDPR decision to myself but I did wonder whether I should, especially as the filing cabinet containing all my paperwork is full. So, when Milly came back into the office, today, one of her jobs was to throw away any of my stuff that was dated before April 2012. 

There was a lot of it.

In the photo is my contract for a job at Barclays that I started in 1993, just after Hannah was born. In fact, I was supposed to start on the Monday when she was only a couple of days old (I couldn't afford to take time off) but when I arrived they told me I wasn't expected until the following week. 

In a panic, I rang my contact, Derek, at the agency and he said it was their mistake and that I should have the week off; he'd make sure I was paid anyway. It was totally unexpected and it was a valuable lesson that being good in business doesn't mean being hard-nosed. 

The other thing that all this paperwork from over twenty years ago reminded me was just how much of a slog it was before we had email and internet banking!

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-10.6 kgs
Reading: 'Refining Sound' by Brian K Shepard