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My catalogue of mishaps today:-
1) Stupidly volunteer to help StillWaters with yet more budget photocopying.
2) Start chugging through copying - copier runs out of staples.
3) Mutter, pull out staple unit, get new pack of staples out of box. Eye staples warily. The staples come in razor thin sheets and are held together in a stack with a cunning cardboard tray/strip arrangement.
4) Figure out how to remove strip of cardboard. Attempt to insert staples into staple unit. Staple pack objects to no longer being neatly restrained by disintegrating into its component parts. I am now standing surrounded by a carpet of shiny silver metal.....
5) Swear, collect staple sheets up, try to get them to stay together. They laugh at me and disintegrate again. This happens 3 times.
6) Give up, get new staple pack, this time NOT removing any of the cardboard packaging.
7) Attempt, again, to get staples into staple unit. Plastic staple unit decides to come out in favour with the staples and disintegrates into its component parts, the spring of which manages to ping an impressive distance.
8) Snarl. Gather every component part. Stomp down hall to the room where the copier/printer network guys live. Wail for help.
9) Parts are prodded, there is no spare unit in stock, they'll get back to me.
10) Go back to office, sheepishly announce we're switching to manual stapling for a bit, go back to copying.
11) Put next batch of A4 in the feeder, set it up, press go. Copier insists paper is actually A3. Smack it and reset the size to A4. Copier sulks and prints out 4 blank sheets....
12) Bury head in hands
13) Network chap scampers in with repaired staple unit. I resist urge to kiss him. "Copier not behaving? Oh it does that when the staple unit isn't in. Here ya go!"
14) Copier doesn't believe the staple unit is in. I try technical things*. It continues to refuse to believe. I slink down hall back to Network guys and proclaim the copier an atheist.
15) Network guy, who was in the middle of munching his breakfast slice of toast, makes soothing noises and brings holy water to perform exorcism. Which consists of fishing out a bunch of loose staples that had fallen into various crevices and were preventing the copier from noticing it was, in fact, in full possession of a staple unit.
16) I grovel my gratitude and try, yet again, to copy the next batch of budget info. 3 copies, double sided, stapled. The copier attempts to print out onto A3 and then, having been told yet again not to, prints out 4 blank pages. I try technical things**. They don't work.
17) Sob
18) Trail down to network guys. There may have been flailing.
19) Heads are scratched but there's an engineer due in today, they tell me.
20) Go back to worried faces in my office and explain there might be a slight delay (btw, this stuff has to be out of the office, stuffed into the right envelopes and in the post room before lunch...)
21) Network Gal comes to my rescue and does technical things*** and the little f****r works first time.
22) I make myself a stiff cup of tea, rebelliously eat a chocolate biscuit and finishing the stupid, sodding photocopying.
The rest of the day was light relief by comparison; just a mountain of adjustment forms to process, a billion phone calls, most of them highly stupid, and managing to smack myself on the forehead, hard, with the telephone handset (don't ask).
I want a refund on today :P Tune in tomorrow when the copier will need the toner replacing.....
* I hit it
** I switched it on and off
*** She switched it on and off....
PS: For students of irony, my icon is from Wicked, illustrating the song "No Good Deed".....
1) Stupidly volunteer to help StillWaters with yet more budget photocopying.
2) Start chugging through copying - copier runs out of staples.
3) Mutter, pull out staple unit, get new pack of staples out of box. Eye staples warily. The staples come in razor thin sheets and are held together in a stack with a cunning cardboard tray/strip arrangement.
4) Figure out how to remove strip of cardboard. Attempt to insert staples into staple unit. Staple pack objects to no longer being neatly restrained by disintegrating into its component parts. I am now standing surrounded by a carpet of shiny silver metal.....
5) Swear, collect staple sheets up, try to get them to stay together. They laugh at me and disintegrate again. This happens 3 times.
6) Give up, get new staple pack, this time NOT removing any of the cardboard packaging.
7) Attempt, again, to get staples into staple unit. Plastic staple unit decides to come out in favour with the staples and disintegrates into its component parts, the spring of which manages to ping an impressive distance.
8) Snarl. Gather every component part. Stomp down hall to the room where the copier/printer network guys live. Wail for help.
9) Parts are prodded, there is no spare unit in stock, they'll get back to me.
10) Go back to office, sheepishly announce we're switching to manual stapling for a bit, go back to copying.
11) Put next batch of A4 in the feeder, set it up, press go. Copier insists paper is actually A3. Smack it and reset the size to A4. Copier sulks and prints out 4 blank sheets....
12) Bury head in hands
13) Network chap scampers in with repaired staple unit. I resist urge to kiss him. "Copier not behaving? Oh it does that when the staple unit isn't in. Here ya go!"
14) Copier doesn't believe the staple unit is in. I try technical things*. It continues to refuse to believe. I slink down hall back to Network guys and proclaim the copier an atheist.
15) Network guy, who was in the middle of munching his breakfast slice of toast, makes soothing noises and brings holy water to perform exorcism. Which consists of fishing out a bunch of loose staples that had fallen into various crevices and were preventing the copier from noticing it was, in fact, in full possession of a staple unit.
16) I grovel my gratitude and try, yet again, to copy the next batch of budget info. 3 copies, double sided, stapled. The copier attempts to print out onto A3 and then, having been told yet again not to, prints out 4 blank pages. I try technical things**. They don't work.
17) Sob
18) Trail down to network guys. There may have been flailing.
19) Heads are scratched but there's an engineer due in today, they tell me.
20) Go back to worried faces in my office and explain there might be a slight delay (btw, this stuff has to be out of the office, stuffed into the right envelopes and in the post room before lunch...)
21) Network Gal comes to my rescue and does technical things*** and the little f****r works first time.
22) I make myself a stiff cup of tea, rebelliously eat a chocolate biscuit and finishing the stupid, sodding photocopying.
The rest of the day was light relief by comparison; just a mountain of adjustment forms to process, a billion phone calls, most of them highly stupid, and managing to smack myself on the forehead, hard, with the telephone handset (don't ask).
I want a refund on today :P Tune in tomorrow when the copier will need the toner replacing.....
* I hit it
** I switched it on and off
*** She switched it on and off....
PS: For students of irony, my icon is from Wicked, illustrating the song "No Good Deed".....
indescribable
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