Fun With Copy Machines

I don't know why this is, but I have never managed to feel like an adult human being doing a job. I always feel like a little kid who has somehow stumbled into an office in a suit way too big for me, faking it as much as possible in hopes that I can pass for a grown-up. Kind of like Tom Hanks's character in Big (and what do you mean, you've never seen Big? Go rent it right now).  The only time I ever feel like an adult is when I'm in some kind of trouble, and--no, actually not even then. This is a big switch from when I was a kid and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I was stuck in a room with other kids all day,  I mean, I was at least thirty. Okay, past life thing, whatever.  But there it is. I got older but somehow I never grew up.

Anyway, regardless of my actual age, there are plenty of times when I wonder what in the hell I'm doing in an office. Any office. Somebody like me should be wrestling polar bears in the Great Northwest or hand firing swords or looking through a microscope at dangerous virii or something.  And sometimes technology is not my friend. Okay, sometimes technology isn't anybody's friend, but sometimes I feel like I have more trouble doing what should be very simple things than other people do.

Take, for example, Tuesday.   At this law firm, we have these very punctual Monday morning calendar meetings, where we get together and go over the calendar and make sure everything's covered and that nobody is scheduled to be in, say, Boston and Houston on the same day. Very punctual,  except on this particular Monday,  the litigation section had a big meeting of its own. So the calendar meeting got moved to Tuesday.

Tuesday morning came and I forgot all about the calendar meeting. I was still running triage after the litigation meeting, making lists of stuff to do and trying to decide what I could handle  myself and what I could foist off on other people. Suddenly my phone rang and the receptionist told me they were all waiting for me at the calendar meeting.  And a mad scramble ensued.

Part of my gig, you see, involves printing the big calendar for these meetings. We need 18 copies. What's more, it's long, running to ten or twelve pages sometimes. So I jump up. Then I sit back down and tell my computer to print out the calendar, 18 copies, collated and stapled  please, and would it kindly step on it because I'm late for a meeting. The printer obligingly whirs to life, starts printing the first copy and then promptly jams.

Well, of course it does. Copiers and printers only work when you aren't busy and there's nothing due in the next 5 minutes. I don't have time to figure out which tab has stopped fitting into which slot, so I do the next best thing, which is sending the whole print job to a different printer.

I hear the printer fire up across the hall and I run over there with my notepad and pen, ready  to grab the pages off the printer and run like a maniac to the other end of the office (because the meeting is at one end of the office and I'm at the desk it's the farthest from). I grab the pages and start flipping through them while I'm waiting (impatiently) for the last few copies to roll off.  I've only looked at two or three pages when I realize I have another problem. The top of the page says February 3. This isn't February 3, it's March 27.  I've just printed 18 copies of  the wrong calendar.

Back to my office I go. At great speed.  I pull up the calendar again. I set it for the right dates.  I decide to send it to the high-speed printer, which is in the mail room, which is at least sort of on the way to the meeting.  It is also, as the name suggests, high speed.  I grab my notebook and pen and take off out of my office as the phone starts to ring again.  And I burst into the copy room, ready to grab my calendars and take off.

But no. I don't know why or how, but I've somehow sent this print job to the only printer in the entire American legal system that doesn't collate automatically.  Which means I now have a nice, stapled set of 18 copies of Page One, 18 copies of Page Two... you get the idea.

I grab a staple remover and start ripping out staples.  Then I sweep everything off this big long table and lay down my 18 copies of Page One, face down. Then my 18 copies of Page Two.  And Three.  And so on, and so forth, one fricking page at a time, until I finally have 18 copies of the right calendar.

I still have to staple them all. Then I have to clean up the mess from where I swept everything onto the floor.  Then, pretty out of breath by this time , I have to run the rest of the way down the hall to the other end of the office, burst in on the group of people who've been waiting for me for the past 20 minutes, apologize all over the place and (finally) sit down.

After which, things went pretty smoothly. At least until I got to the part of the meeting where I said, "Please  turn to paage 5 in the calendar," and all these little voices at once started saying, "I don't have a page 5."

Turned out nobody had a page 5. How could they? Page 5 was still on the frick'n sorting table. Next to the bin full of metal clamps and the heavy duty stapler.

Seriously, maybe I should open a cheese store. Or become a professional wrestler. Or manage a heavy metal band. As long as there are no copy machines. If there are any copy machines, I'm going to send my assistant over there. Right after he finishes separating out all the green M&Ms for Eddie Van Halen.