The Case Against Machines

Remember that scene in “Office Space” where the three geeks steal the fax machine (printer?) and smash it to smithereens with a baseball bat, in the middle of a field? That’s like every day in my office. My fantasies consist of moments where I lasso the photocopier on our floor, forklift it to the nearest window and launch it eleven floors down to the street with a primal scream. Of course there are obvious reasons why I’d never actually do this…I mean come on people, I am human. I mean, how am I ever going to get a forklift in the elevator?

I’m not overly concerned with any passers by down below or anything, I think worse things fall on them in NYC every day and since there are approximately seven billion ways to die in New York City at any given moment, Xerox machines falling from the sky are just one of many unforeseen circumstances we put up with every day. If that were to happen, tourists would shriek and cover their horrified faces in terror at the vision of a giant, mangled copier with limbs splaying out from underneath, whereas New Yorkers would be like, “Can you please f*cking move, you’re getting your blood all over my shoe, asshole!”

Calm down, I’m kidding. New Yorkers would never say “please”.

Today one of my coworkers – one of the ones I like, fortunately, was photocopying a stack of materials, which, if placed out on the Avenue, one on top of the other, would rival the height of the building itself. This was practically a seamless job as far as our evil Copier from Hades is concerned. Or it just likes my lovely coworker so much better than I. I guess she doesn’t kick it and say, “You like that don’t you, you little whore!” like I do.

When she’d done and I was trying to copy my one measly expense report, the machine chewed it up and spat it out. Well half of it anyway. The other half was still wedged somewhere in its innards and well…following those little diagrams inside the door that tell you how to clear a jam? They’re worse than Ikea instructions. Trillions of green knobs and pulleys and stuff you yank out and things you press and little, hot, scaldy things you burn your digits on every time because there’s a law that says in order to have a paper jam inside the machine, rather than on the peripherals, the jammed paper must be next to a metal bar the exact temperature of an erupting volcano and since the copier doesn’t generally come with asbestos gloves you just have to agree to give up the skin on your hand.

It tells me the most useless crap too (a bit like this blog entry). It boasts “tray 1 is low on paper” even though I’m using tray 4 and could not give a shit about tray 1’s deficiencies. Shut up copier. Once you can make me an omelet and a margarita then you might be relevant.