Murphy's Law of Printers: they will NEVER (EVER) work when you are on a deadline. **Special note: the bigger the printer, the more disastrous it's failure.
The printer at work will hereby and henceforth be referred to as "evil incarnate" or "EI" for short. It's one of those massive machines that prints, copies, staples, juggles, eats first born children... you know, the whole shebang, and it has (as of yesterday) waged a full out war against my sanity. It started acting up around 7 that evening when a lady asked me for help with a job she was trying to print. We worked on it over the course of a couple hours and eventually got her job to print, but I am convinced that this was all some mind game EI was playing with me to build my confidence before it was shattered completely.
About half an hour before I was supposed to close down the lab, a lady came needing to make a few copies and to print out over a hundred page document. Shortly after I'd sent her on her way with instructions on how to work the printer, she was back asking me for help. I was feeling pretty confident about my printer skills so I swaggered into the lab like I was in charge as EI belched out a copy/scan sound that I now realize was it's own private form of maniacal laughter. It had accepted my unintentional challenge.
An hour later, my frustrated customer had returned to her room and I was left staring at the gloating printer, all but begging it to print. I had promised the lady that I would do my best to have her document ready at the desk for her when she came down in the morning. EI was quick to remind me that it made no such promise. I resigned myself to letting EI sit by itself all night and think about what it had done to me and resolved to return in the morning to exact my vengeance.
Bright and early I was back on the job. I finally figured out how to get copies made and I gloated proudly with my hand full of warm black and white pages as the lady knocked on the computer lab door and made her entrance. Confident that EI had come to its senses, I showed her how to send her job the printer. I crossed my fingers, held my breath, and NOTHING happened. Not even the laugh disguised as a warming-up sound! We tried several more times before the very upset woman turned to me and announced that she had places to be and she needed this fixed so that she would have her document in time for her meeting. I apologized profusely and promised to do my best to get her job printed as she announced her displeasure to everyone we passed.
After she left, I called every supervisor, boss, and office manager I had a phone number for. I contacted tech support, printer support, and emotional support. A technician came to work on the printer while I sent the document to another building to be printed and made arrangements for it to be delivered to the desk before the lady returned. I held the stack of papers and breathed a deep sigh of relief as a feeling of accomplishment washed over me. I called the lady up and informed her that her papers were waiting for her. She picked up her document with a smile that showed the same feeling of relief I was reveling in and she hurried away to her room.
The relief was short-lived though. She returned to the desk 10 minutes later and asked one simple question that changed everything, "Is there a reason you printed my papers double-sided?" Thinking she was pleasantly surprised, I happily informed her that must have been the printer was preset to save paper. She looked at me, shook her head, and said, I needed it to be single-sided. I stumbled over myself apologetically and told her I would see what I could do to fix it but she shook her head and said it was too late as she walked out the door. I felt about two inches tall. I turned to look at my co-worker and said, "Can I take my 15 minute break now to go cry in the closet?"
Sadly, this story doesn't have a happy ending, but it does have a moral. Sometimes we just need to learn a lesson in grace. Grace for others who make us feel incompetent yes, but also grace for ourselves. Lets be honest, I'm not a technician, there is literally nothing I could have done (short of taking a baseball bat to the stupid thing and even the benefits of that are debatable) to fix this problem. I had no way of knowing that the printer in the other building would print things double-sided, or that that would even be an issue to begin with. I did everything I could to make that situation work out, but I'm not perfect and sometimes I fail, and that's ok. God loves me anyway, despite my (many) shortcomings. AND, if He can forgive me mine, then I can forgive her hers. What goes around comes around right? So if any of ya'll ever find me in a computer room threatening a large piece of equipment with a louisville slugger, just kindly remove the wooden club from my hand and cut me some slack ok? Much obliged.
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