Back in college, I worked in an office. I knew how to work the copy machine. It wasn't that hard, and I didn't understand why some people just couldn't get it. About every other time they had to make some copies, it would get all screwed up.
Yesterday, I had to make copies of two sets of things. One had two pages and the other four pages. I tried to copy the smaller set first. When the second page went in, I experienced a paper jam. I could only see one that was jammed, so I took it out and tried to convince the new-fangled menu system that I had indeed cleared the jam. It took me several minutes to find the second sheet jammed in there. Once that was cleared, I had to go through the menu system to assure it I was ready to continue copying. At that point, it told me it was out of paper.
Once the second set was copied (with what I thought were no problems), I tried to piece all the papers together. Just like the dryer eats one sock each time, the copier seemed to have eaten one original page. I remembered throwing an extra copy in the recycle bin, so I suspected it was really a good original. I rooted around in there, but couldn't find that paper that I had just thrown in there. I finally found it by bending down and sticking my head and shoulders into the bin--it had wormed its way down under six or seven other sheets of paper. Sadly, it really was an extra un-needed copy.
At this point, I could hear Carolyn on the other side of the cubicle wall, giggling at my efforts.
After a minute or two of obsessively-compulsively reviewing all the papers I had in hand to see if I might have just *missed* that one copy, I decided to make the copy again the old-fashioned way: open the top and place the paper on the glass (instead of feeding it through the jam prone sheet feeder). There was the missing paper, sitting on the glass.
I guess now I'm the idiot. Copying shouldn't be this hard.
Permalink