For All Our Technology...

It seems that for all of our techonology we are becoming less able to do things on our own. I'm talking the most basic of things as related to the typical office environment. For example, what is happening right now in my office. We have two rather expensive color copiers. These scan, fax, print, make capuchino, etc. I am witness to the downfall of man as I type this.

Person A (Bob) is talking with Person B (Stan). Stan really likes the information Bob has on a particular brochure and wants a copy. Bob agrees its good for Stan to have, so both walk over to the copier. Hm, copier seems to be on the fritz, they make their way to the other copier. It seems to be misbehaving this morning as well. The duo walk back to the first copier (closet to me). They try it again, I suppose in the hopes that the Copier Fairy had magically fixed the machine while they were on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, they forgot to leave the brochure under their collective pillows, for the machine is still not working.

Not to be done in by a simple copier though, Stan and Bob begin to troubleshoot the infernal machine. They proceed to fill ALL the paper trays. I suppose as an offering to the Copier Fairy. This doesn't seem to work, perhaps they should have offered a bloody chicken foot. A quick check of the internals of the machine doesn't seem to be helping either. They discuss the ill behaving copier at length, then make their way to the second copier. They must have had an epiphany or something, perhaps the Copier Fairy favors this second machine over the first? No. The second copier is just as out of commission as the first.

This wonderful floor show has been going on for a good 15 minutes now, with no sign of slowing down. I wonder how long it would have taken Stan to manually copy the critical information from Bob's brochure? Probably less time. Assuming this duo makes $90k a year, they wasted $21.64. That's lunch for 3 days! No worries though, I took considerably less time to write this.