please call for service

When I first started work as a teacher I thought learning to work the copier would be my greatest challenge. I have a horrible history with copiers, mostly revolving around midnight copying stints in the library the night before a paper was due. I had, you see, a wonderful 5-step plan for writing any and every paper in college. First, I compiled a list of resources I needed (preferably full-text from J-Stor; when it failed, books currently checked in). Second, I scheduled a trip to the library. Step two was always the most traumatic part. I love libraries generally -- cozy nooks full of other-worldly fiction or Bill Bryson tales of faraway places -- but there is something about research libraries that sends me running. I'm pretty sure it's the copiers.

I'd get to the library and painfully plow through the bizarre system my college used. (In four years, I never figured it out. All I can say definitively is that it was not Dewey Decimal, which was what my elementary school used.) Eventually I tended to locate another student in my class and find myself combing shelves in roughly the right neck of the PZ's. I'd gather up any book that looked vaguely related to, say, 17th century English actresses and cart the stash to the coin-operated copier.

About this time, I'd wander down to a different floor of the library, where I could usually find a drowsy librarian to remind me that, actually, we'd been through this before and now you could use a copy card to swipe through the machine and, for just $5, $10 or $25 I could buy my very own. Or, I could dig through my wallet and find the one the I'd bought last time and forgotten about.

Having secured said card, I'd trudge back up to the lonely copier and introduce it to my first book. I'd want something simple, like a copy of a page, but from the introduction onwards things would go from bad to worse. I'd position the book, close the lid and press the magic button. Out would come the top half of two consecutive pages. I'd open the lid, rotate the book 90 degrees and try again. Out would come 75% of the page I wanted, with the missing quarter being the most vital. I'd pull the book up to what I judged to be sufficient enough to cut off the top margin and try again. This time, however, I wouldn't have pulled the lid down with the requisite vigor, and the shadowy margins of the middle of the page would obscure 10% of the side of text. I'd hold it down harder the next time and try again, only to learn that in the process I'd shifted the book and had again lost the bottom quarter of text. I'd realign, push down properly and find that all was present and legible except for the last line of text, at which point I'd give up and copy the line down by hand.

And that would be the first source.

Tears, sweat, blood, $200 and two hours later I'd call campus safety to give me a ride back to my dorm where I'd finish steps 3, 4 and 5 (skimming the sources for relevant quotes, typing the quotes into my computer and writing a paper around these quotes) before turning in it at 9 am.

Some people lose their fortunes gambling. I lost mine adjusting the copier.

So you see, my experiences with copiers revolved painfully around coins, cards and getting the pages to print right. Never did I imagine I'd soon be responsible for repairing a machine I could barely operate.

At my work (which happens to be in a school), there are many, many people who need to print many, many things, usually simultaneously. I understand that this must be a serious strain on our poor copier (it has what I think could be termed a "weak constitution" at the best of times), but I am of the school of thought that copiers are machines and machines are supposed to be above all that getting tired and throwing hissy fits nonsense. Someone evidently forgot to tell ours that.

I've started a log of the copier's More Significant Misdeeds. I'm the only one who updates it, but it makes me feel better. I don't write down the normal stuff -- when it gets a paper jam, or runs out of toner, or gets another paper jam, or forgets a job, or gets a paper jam in a different place, or takes paper from the wrong tray, or doesn't realize the document feeder is closed, or prints blanks because it didn't take the paper, or gets another paper jam -- just the big stuff. Like when you've asked it to print 4 classes' worth of reports and it suddenly got so overloaded it had a silent panic attack and fainted.

We've tried all sorts of methods. My favorite is the Soothing, which consists of me standing next to the copier and massaging it gently while cooing softly about how very much I'd like to throw it out the window. (Copiers, like dogs, only understand your tone of voice. They have no idea if they're actually being insulted.) Occasionally this works and all is soon right with the world, except for 4 reportless classes. Generally it doesn't.

When gentle cooing fails, it is time for the drastic method of Pulling the Plug, which is every bit as dreadful as it sounds. You have to squeeze into the tiny corner between the copier and the table and bend over while half balanced on the table in a maneuver I'm sure they don't usually teach in yoga, but really should. Assuming you manage to achieve this position, you then must hold it for 30 seconds, which is the amount of time Bujae, our resident computer fix-it specialist, says is requisite for the copier to properly feel the consequences of its guilty actions. Bujae also doesn't wear skirts to work while he teaches machines moral lessons.

30 seconds later, you re-plug the machine and straighten up. Then you wait five minutes for the copier to decide whether or not it wants to remember the sixteen jobs you'd sent to it prior to its meltdown. Generally it doesn't, so you send them through again, only to find that, in its renewed zeal for life, it has printed them all twice.

Which has exhausted it so grievously it faints again. Which means it is time to call William. For the third time this week.

William is a short middle aged man who always looks slightly preoccupied. His appearance doesn't exactly invite the utmost confidence and I've never heard him say anything, but he's got the tools and certainly has a better chance of taming the beast than we do. He's got a mustache.

I understand that not everyone is on a first-name basis with their copier fix-it man, but with William, shucks. We're thinking of calling him Billy.