We have an amazing printer at work. It does anything and everything a printer-scanner-fax machine can do and it can even do several of those things at once. Today I was scanning documents for the machine to make into a pdf file and send back to my computer. Rye, a new employee, printed a sales document. He retrieved it and we exchanged “excuse me’s” and “pardon me’s”.
Moments later I started “building” my second pdf scan and the document feeder jammed. I cleared the jam easily and quickly, and the machine asked if I wanted to abort my job in progress or continue. I asked it to continue. The screen went blank. None of the moving parts on the machine moved. It remained ominously quiet.
I pushed the start key. Nothing happened. I pushed the status key. Nothing happened. I pushed the stop key. Nothing happened. I pushed the abort key. Nothing happened. Well, something happened — one of the phone reps came in and said, “Did my order print?” (But I don’t think that had anything to do with the buttons I was pushing.) I told the phone rep that the machine was acting up and I was going to the Office Manager to tattle. The phone rep said that sounded like an excellent idea, then she tip-toed backward out of the room. Odd don’t you think?
I told the OM that the copy machine was being mean to me. She wanted me to be a bit more specific about its behavior. I told her all the key pushing stuff. She went to the machine and pushed all the same keys. It behaved the same for her as it had for me. She mumbled, “Fine then, be that way,” and she flipped the power switch. Nothing happened. The LCD panel remained lit and all the buttons glowed.
The OM looked quite surprised. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “If this doesn’t work,” she said, “We pull the power cord.” And just then the machine lights went out and the LCD screen went dark. The OM nodded her head, “That threat works every time,” she said.
Rye entered the work room. He said, “I just tried to print something from my desk and a note came up on my computer screen that said the machine was down.”
“I broke it.” I told him.
Rye nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the note said.”
“The note mentioned me by name?” I queried.
“Yes,” Rye answered. “The note said, ‘Be careful of that Charlene person because she is wild and dangerous and she just broke me‘.”
— *** —
Ha! I like him. Rye can stay.