An Hour

I spent an hour today, a whole long hour, attempting to print one, single-sided sheet of A4. Do you know how many other things I could have done with that hour? I could have written at least a 1,000 words, probably 2,500 if I wasn't really fussed how good they were. I could have watched that episode of Glee that’s waiting for me on my digital recorder. I could have finished reading my book, gone for a run, made some soup, heck I could have cleared my in-box at work. Instead I spent a whole hour running backwards and forwards between various printers in my building in the vain hope that one of them would deem me worthy, by producing print job I’d requested.

It wasn’t anything particularly difficulty, as already mentioned it was a single-sided sheet of A4. I need it in colour and there were a couple of small logos included, all set up on page orientated to landscape. Really nothing too challenging and the black and white printer had no trouble with it. The colour printer on the other hand, oh no, this was far too challenging. The first printer was happy to print in colour, but for some reason, known only to it’s inner cogs and gears, the request to print landscape was simply beyond its grasp, I tried every setting my poor decrepit desktop offers me. I sent it to every tray on the printer with the paper set in every combination of positions, but it stubbornly refused to do anything except centrally print my landscape document on a portrait page, so not only was it in the wrong orientation, but it was also missing quite significant words from the left hand side of the text.

Eventually I could no longer face the whirring, clunking hunk of junk which was not only refusing to do as I ask, but also insisting that I needed to manually tell it everything was good to go by pressing the ‘online’ button before it would spew forth a single letter or punctuation mark. So I ventured downstairs to another colour printer.

I particularly hate this printer, we have a relationship which goes way back. Sure things started out rosie, and it was my closest ally in the office, zipping out clear, crisp copies of any documents I should need. As is the way of these things however the relationship soon soured, it refused to print except from the manual feed tray, which is a tricky bugger at the best of times, still we soldiered on. Until the fateful day I came down to find the manual feed tray broken, I tried everything to fix it but eventually I gave up and had to call in the big guns and ask reception to call for an engineer. However the engineer came, the engineer went and within five minute the manual feed was broken again. This cycle went on until I eventually gave up reporting the issue and printing in colour.

Never-the-less today I knew I’d have to go and try and re-kindle a relationship with my nemesis if I ever wanted my document printed. Let’s just say things did not end well and I still am without my solitary, sheet printed out. After an hour of trying and failing, I was forced to leave the office for a long standing appointment. Possibly fortuitous timing all things considered, as I had reached tipping point, the slightest nudge would have sent me over the edge and one or more useless pieces of machinery might have found themselves getting defenestrated.

I now intend to spend an evening in the calm, serenity of some sewing. I shall surround myself with the soft, forgivingness of my beautiful fabrics and loose myself in colour and texture. Just so long as the sewing machine doesn’t start playing silly buggers everything will be just fine..............