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Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Emily Reed on 10/21/2001; 6:20 PM Although most of the country is educated at least to a high school level, many people dont quite have the skills to operate a Xerox machine. Just a few weeks ago I witnessed a truly catastrophic situation, resembling a kick boxing fight, between a fuming mother of an eighth grade American history student, and one paper-jammed copy machine. A more recent phenomenon occurred just yesterday and involved a soon-to-be-blind thirty-three-year-old and a mound of needing-to-be-copied papers. Even some doctors have difficulty conquering the copy-machine-disease. Copying will be a burden for adults and children alike for years to come. All my life I will wonder why kids think their parents should go out and do their copying for them. If your report involves copying 17 pages of pictures then you should haul your little self down to the library and do some copying, but there are always the lazy guys like Conrad. OK, copies are 10 cents so Mom should need $1.70. Conrad plots his plan; hell pay for the copies if shell go make them. Mom, do you think I could get you to make some copies for me, Conrad pleads for assistance. How many? his mother stalls. 17" 17, are you crazy Oh please its necessary for my report, he said. A little white-lie never hurts. Oh OK! His mother agrees. So far Conrads mother is mad but hasnt really done anything wrong, but just wait until she gets to the library. This story gets a lot more disastrous. Conrads mother made her way to the copy machine. She had a rather high stack of books and a very aggravated look on her face. After attempting to copy for five minutes, the mad woman begins opening doors, ripping at paper and pressing every button in existence. After several minutes of ineffectual pounding, door-opening, and tearing of paper, the stranger begins mouthing horrible, insulting words out loud to the copier as if were of human kind. A man, waiting in line walked over to offer his assistance. He glanced at the copy machines screen. Please deposit 10 cents, it read. Well, hello this was it she had never paid. Excuse me, but you need to put your money in. the man interrupted Money, what money? Oh . . . Finally, the crinkle of a dollar bill as its being jammed into the money- taker, is heard. She pressed the green button and her face lit up like lights on a shining Christmas tree, as the paper rolled out and she collected her first copy of the night. My next crisis has a bit of a doleful ending. There was a man, around the age of thirty-three and a stack of books towering far too high to be measure, in the copying section. There were also many people waiting in line. The gentleman, who was obviously in a hurry, had a look in his eye as if he knew he was getting away with a shortcut. The poor guy had decided to leave the lid open as he made his copies. Well, he turned his page and slapped it onto the glass; his finger moving closer and closer to the green start button, the urge for someone to close the top grew stronger and stronger. But unfortunately no one did. He pressed the button and the blinding sharp green laser shot into the air. The next sound heard was a bloodcurdling scream followed by a hard pound as an innocent copy machine was kicked, then there was cursing. Some people swear they saw smoke coming out of the impaired mans ears. The last seen of that guy was when he ran off into the Louisiana History section. We then have those who feel the copy machine is a camera, a toy to make obscene pictures with to amuse your fellow fools as you work on your term paper. Heres 10 dollars in case you need to make a few copies, call me, or something Thanks dad. The brainless young teen opens the lid to the machine and pulls down his pants. As he hops up and sits on the cold clear glass, a rather shy grin spreads across his face. After his pants are re-buttoned, he smiles when he looks down at the picture of his buttocks. He makes his way over to his buddies and shows them what he has just done. Hey guys, look what I did. Cool dude, wheres the copier Amused by the picture, the boy and his four study-buddies race off, leaving the abandoned books for some 10 cents a copy machine. Money zooms in and papers zoom out, but then it all stops thirteen minutes later with this total waste-of-breath conversation. Hey give me 35 cents! What? No! I gotta call my dad Didnt he give you money? Ummm . . .yeah . . . look what your holding. Idiot number three looks down at the ninety-seven copies of body parts hes holding and starts digging in his pockets for change. So my basic point is, get your education and degrees and special know-it-all titles, but dont forget to get the title that reads common-sense-genius. Come on, people. Can copying really be that hard? When in doubt read the directions. Check your local library or office supply store to observe more copying crises.
Re: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Matthew Patterson, the Paranoid Minister on 5/14/2001; 11:48 PM Emily: Good story! Funny and true. I've seen all those types of people. A couple comments: You seem to switch to present tense when you talk about the idiots Xeroxing their body parts. Was this intended or not? This site's formatting is a bit weird. Single returns are not accepted, double returns are. That's why your paragraphs are all run together. You can either double-space in between paragraphs or use the [br] tag (using less-than greater-than brackets to enclose it instead of [ ]) as you would a single return. Indenting doesn't work too well either, so you might want to just double-space. Fortunately, you can edit your story at any time, so this is easily fixable. Someone really ought to write some formatting instructions for this place one day. Heck, I think I will tomorrow night. Be advised that a update to the Writings index and main page won't take place until Mark Morgan, the site admin, gets back from Inter-ISP Limbo. Your story still exists, the site just isn't updated to show it. Good work! I hope you stick around and read some more stuff here and maybe write some more!
Re: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Dorothy Marie on 5/15/2001; 12:07 AM Emily! Great piece! I love it! Just remember that copying machines are your friend if you treat it nicely and don't abuse it when the screen shows you where the problem is that is not allowing your papers to print, but you don't know where it is on the machine. They're really nice if you get to know them. Conrad's mother should be shot. Now will you become an author? Please?
Re: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: ScottN on 5/15/2001; 2:29 AM Matt, just a formatting note; You can insert a generic <TAG> and not have it interpreted by using the following: for < use "<" (no quotes), and for > use ">" (again, no quotes). Scott
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Seth Dillingham on 5/15/2001; 8:41 AM On Tuesday, May 15, 2001 at 12:04 AM, Matthew wrote: > This site's formatting is a bit weird. Single returns are not accepted, > double returns are. That's why your paragraphs are all run together. You can > either double-space in between paragraphs or use the [br] tag (using > less-than greater-than brackets to enclose it instead of [ ]) as you would a > single return. Indenting doesn't work too well either, so you might want to > just double-space. Fortunately, you can edit your story at any time, so this > is easily fixable. If you enclose your whole piece in <pre></pre> tags, then all of your formatting will be accepted, but then you MUST end each line with a carriage return. Seth
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Evan on 5/15/2001; 8:44 AM This is pretty funny and always seems to happen to me. I know how to work a copy machine but they just don't seem to like me. I don't know why, I'm pretty nice to them. They always seem to run out of ink or paper or get paper jams. Then I have to go to the library ladies to get help as I can't replace the ink or clear paper jams very well. Actually I just remembered that copiers use toner, not ink. For paper I can just filch some from the printers except that then I seem to cause a paper jam. I'm probably severely lacking in the common sense department or maybe I'm just not copier savvy. At least I'm quite as bad as the people in your story. Actually I have done copies with the lid open but only because the thingy would not fit. The light didn't really bother me that much but then I used to stare at the sun a lot when I was little and this wasn't quite as bright.
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Richard Davidson on 5/15/2001; 7:43 PM I used to work at Kinko's, where wonders never cease, and saw all of the manifestations of behavior you describe. If the company would've let me, I would've physically thrown people out of the building for the way they would treat these wondrous machines. For just pennies, you can have an exact reproduction of anything in the entire world, as long as it's in black and white, and only two dimensional. Elephants are out, as are aged bottles of vodka. But if it's merely words on a page, you're in luck! We also had the most amazing machine on the planet, the Canon Color Copier, but we kept the ignorant masses the hell away from that one! Sometimes you'd make a copy of a photo, and the copy would look better than the photo! Keep in mind, I didn't have a scanner, or printer, or life in those days. Abusing a copier just shows me what kind of person you are. You're a punk. You take life, and all its little miracles for granted, and EXPECT technology to just magically do things for you, with no desire to understand those things. I advise all the members of this cool website to stand up for copiers, and if you see people like our author has described, run at them, weilding a big book, or whatever you have handy, and let out the same scream Viking Warriors let out in the Fifteenth Century, when they really were at their best. You'd be surprised how often that gets a reaction.
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Emily Reed on 10/18/2006; 9:03 PM I am the other of this article and would like to know how it was posted onto this site?!
Re: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Mark Morgan on 10/19/2006; 11:16 AM can you mail mark@voicesofunreason.com directly so we can discuss it? A person by the username Emily Reed has been posting here for some time.
On 10/18/06, Emily Reed <anon0670.dreamzone-redux@free-conversant.com> wrote: [Talkback about Essays: Crisis At the Copy Machine by Emily Reed] -- ---Mark "Too bad dark languages....rarely survive."
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Richard Davidson on 10/24/2006; 11:23 PM This is weird. A person posted this five years ago, and now another person with the same exact name claims to be the "other." I've read stories like this. Usually, at some point, the walrus just eats the oreos.
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 11/12/2006; 3:32 PM googoogachoob?
RE: Crisis At the Copy Machine By: Richard Davidson on 11/12/2006; 10:12 PM Exactly.
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