Me vs. The Printer

Today I am exhausted. Not because I ran a marathon or anything like that. No, instead I physically battled the printer at work today. It was touch and go for a while and I definitely felt the cloud of failure looming over me but eventually perseverance won out. So here is what happened...

4:00 rolled around and the office is becoming increasingly quiet as one of our brokers (and a fellow Wofford grad) approached my desk and asks if I can type a few letters for him. I foolishly ask if he would like me to go ahead and type the envelopes as well (way to be an over-achiever Mary) and he says "Oh yea! That'd be great". Super. So I print the letters on our company letterhead. No problemo. Now onto the envelopes. Once I set it so that the font on the letter and the envelopes match I load the first envelope into the printer and think I will be sitting pretty until I can leave at 5:15. FALSE. This probably what I looked like 5 minutes later...


FAIL.

Exaggeration you say? No. The printer in convinced  there is a paper jam. Um, there is no paper in the printer. I proceed to open the printer up, hit cancel a few times, continue a few times, open the printer up again, hit cancel...you get the idea. The printer (I will eventually name this "machine" but I will not do so in a state of rage because my parents read this blog) is telling me to load my paper, this is exactly what I think I am doing as I am feeding the envelopes in one by one. Failure continues. It is now 5:15, the office is dark. I have now [not so gently] hit the printer a few times and may or may not have stomped my feet on the ground...Anyhoo, I finally realize the trick is to feed the envelope in, hit print, wait for the printer to tell me to load my paper, pull the envelope back out and then feed it in again. Yup. Cool. Eventually I get these bad boys printed, proudly walk back to the broker's office and hand him the letters and envelopes. He looks up from his desk and says "Thanks Mary, I really appreciate it. I was just running behind today". This of course is a very sincere thank-you but inside I wanted someone to jump with with balloons and say "Mary! You are genius! This is the greatest thing ever! And not just ever today but ever in the whole wide world!!!". Instead, I tell him it was my pleasure and I will see him tomorrow. Woe is me.

Moral of the story: If you want me to print something, please allot at least an hour and a chance for me to be alone with the printer with no small children around as I would not want my language to offend. And I guess I should work on that whole "Patience is a virtue" thing. Thanks for reading!

Mary