Copy Hell
Although I used to deal with copy machines at work, I always hated them. Inevitably, they would jam and I’d spend half an hour opening up various drawers and pulling at levers before locating the jam. Then I’d have to use a pair of scissors to painstakingly tweeze out the paper. If I was lucky, the paper wouldn’t shred as I pulled, and I wouldn’t have to spend another hour plucking tiny scraps from the depths of the machine. I usually got toner all over me, and sweated profusely. So when I quit my job and no longer had access to a free copy machine, I sent my copying needs to my husband, and gradually forgot about the agony of copying.
But one day we had a stack of papers three inches thick to copy for our lawyer, and even I knew it would be hard for Chris to get away with copying that much at work. So we agreed to copy them at Staples and spring for the cost ourselves.
Chris was the Staples expert in our home, having worked there for several years during college, so I was assured that I would have expert assistance during the procedure. But as days went by, while Chris worked late and came home too tired to go out, I started getting nervous about how long it was taking us to send the documents to our lawyer.
It took only four or five days of this before I broke down and drove to Staples alone. I hated going there alone, but I hated getting up and seeing the stack of papers I’d assembled, day after day staring back at me and whispering, “Copy me…..copy me…”
I found the self-serve copy machines easily. An elderly woman was the only one there, and she was briskly copying.
I placed all my papers on the desk next to my copy machine, and got ready to copy. There didn’t seem to be a place to insert coins or a key, so I put a few sheets of paper on top of what appeared to be the feeder. I pressed START.
Rather than the reassuring whir of the copy machine starting, the machine blinked drowsily at me. “Choose paper tray,” it said.
I pushed a few buttons, and selected a paper tray that said 8.5 x 11. “Fill paper tray,” the machine advised me.
I opened up the paper trays. The one I selected was empty, but Tray #2, further up in the tray hierarchy, was filled with the right size paper, so I pushed some buttons on the machine to select Tray #2.
The machine didn’t like my choice, and obstinately refused to switch to Tray #2. I couldn’t find any paper around, and I was afraid of the people who worked at Staples, so I pulled out a stack of paper from Tray #2 and moved it into my original tray.
Now the machine was happy about its paper status. Confidently, I pressed START again.
The machine said, “Remove paper from sorter.” Whuh? What was a sorter?
I opened the lid. Nothing underneath. I looked to the side. Nothing. I looked on top. Nothing there except my–oh. Sheepishly, I pulled out my originals from the sorter (which I’d thought was the feeder) and slid them along the top of the machine to another slot which appeared to be the feeder. Apparently the sorter was where paper came out, not where it came in.
This time, START made the machine start.
I copied a few pages successfully, then started piling them on the desk. One pile of copies for the lawyer, one pile of my originals that were copied, and one pile of the stuff that had yet to be copied.
I knocked over the pile of “yet-to-be-copied,” but luckily they didn’t fall too far out of order, since they were mostly heavier, legal-size pages.
By now, an older man had already arrived, copied, and left again, with seemingly no difficulties. The elderly woman on the other side of me was still efficiently copying.
The legal-size papers were in. I slid my originals along the top slot, picked an 11 x 14 paper tray, and pressed START.
Whoops. Wrong size. Evidently 11 x 14 was not legal-size, because the type on my pages looked tiny perched in the middle of a vast expanse of white. I opened all the paper trays, one after another, and held an original to each tray. Aha! Tray #3 was legal-size: 8.5 x 14.
I changed paper trays, and pressed START. This time everything worked, and the copies began sliding out into the document holder, and my originals shot out of the sorter. They were shooting out a little fast, though–hey! Wait! Slow down!
The sorter hadn’t been intended for large pieces of paper, and each time a freshly copied original came out, it pushed the old one off the copy machine, which gleefully soared over the copy machine and onto the floor. I frantically pushed cancel on the machine.
I re-ordered the pages and tried again. This time I was ready, and I hovered over the sorter. As soon as one page copied and the original shot out, I grabbed it. Copy, shoot, grab. Copy, shoot, grab.
An older couple hesitantly walked past me, with a shopping cart and some pieces of paper clutched in their hands. They studied the copy machine next to me, and muttered to each other. I neatly stapled and sorted, and counted my copies, while covertly glancing at them. I had fifty-nine pages of legal-sized copies and sixty-four pages of regular copies. They were still fussing over the positioning of their first copy, and arguing quietly with each other.
I gathered my copies and headed to the cash register, but not before giving them a pitying look. Some day, Chris and I would be them.
Posted by: ssjane | February 5, 2004 | 12:23 pm
Posted in: This Life