Thursday, April 19, 2007

Sad Tale of a Paper-Pusher

So. Today I had planned to blog about the things that I plan to blog about at my blog.

But then the copier jammed. Again. And here I am writing about my day job.

Suffice it to say, that I plan to show you the things I like, the thoughts that pass through my mind (Some linger, some fly right through making a whistling sound. Does that imply something?), or the situations in life that happen to make me want to repeatedly bang my head against the wall. (Like today.) This blog will focus mostly on the current loves of my life. Writing, Food, and Photos. And since I live in NYC, my posts will be highly flavored with stuff from the 212, more commonly referred to as The City. (According to the natives, there really aren't any other cities outside of the 5 boroughs, just small towns and villages. I, of course, know better, or do I? . . .)

And now on to better things.

There are few things in the life of a paper pusher that will make the pitter patter of our hearts race faster and bring smiles of glee to our faces. Among them are nice neat stacks of files or paper, new office supplies or office supply shopping; a new box of nice pens. But above them all, shining in magnificent glory, is a new photo copier.

*Cue shining light from above, and singing*

When we replaced our OLD copier (which worked just fine), with a new one (yea! new tech toys) I was happy. Yes, the old one worked, but it wasn’t new and shiny. The new one came with all sorts of neat cool features. PDF's, rapid copying, network printing. It didn’t harass you to select a paper size when copying just one check, and oh the staple feature! Among the myriads of ways this machine can staple is my favorite, straight up and down, top left corner. I was sold, hook, line, and sinker.

The staple feature falls directly into the obsessive compulsive corner of my heart. All those pages (up to 45) stapled and stacked so tidily, pages even, staples in the exact same place, neatly folded. And that’s where my problems began.

To make an otherwise very long story short, the new copier jams. It jams when you make lots of copies, or when you make just a couple. Lots of pages, just a few? It doesn't matter. There's no rhyme or reason to it. The copier began sporadically jamming and has progressively gotten worse. Always in the same place, pages bunching up on top of each other -like playing sardines- while waiting to be bound. The copier man comes almost daily now, I think pretty soon they’ll just wheel it out and send it on its way to The Great Recycling Center in the Sky.

But oh how I hope. Each time I need to peddle a little more paper, I stand anxiously nearby, waiting. Listening for that tell-tale whir of components and gears, the shuffle of papers compacting upon each other, the screech of mechanical parts refusing to move. The resultant sinking heart as I clear out the jam. Again.

Today the Ricoh - Aficio MP7500 cried out this message after jamming twice in a row:

“Functional problem detected.
Press [Restart] after the current process.
Repeat settings after the machine has restarted.”

I say it's dying. Calling out with its last breath, wanting to be heard. “Save me! I'm dying. Help!” It says. But alas, all that the repairman can do is shake a screwdriver at it, tightening here, loosening there, as the rest of us stand by the wayside wringing our hands, thinking of pretty staples, orderly stacks of paper, and what might have been.

1 comment:

  1. We have same stupid message on our Ricoh. Did you solve it and how?

    Elizabeth
    esp@boselec.com

    ReplyDelete