The No-Good, Terrible, Awful Printer and Why You Can’t Do Without It
Seeing things on the page is essential and important
My god, I hate printers so much. True story: The other day, I was printing something and got an error message saying there was a paper jam. I was in a hurry, so I grabbed my printer, pulling it out from the wall just enough that I could stick my hand behind it, and with one hand, yanked at the paper that was jutting out from its gears. The paper came out—that is, the part that was actually sticking out came off in my hand, but the rest of the paper remained tightly wound in the teeth of the machine. I no longer had anything I could grasp in order to pull the paper out. I stared at the machine for a while, absolutely stumped as to my next move. With a software sort of issue, there’s at least the often-reliable unplug-it-and-wait technique. This was much more basic and purely mechanical, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.
Printers are the strangest creatures in our high-tech universe. Like alligators, they have barely evolved in decades, and they seem absolutely anachronistic, with their chugging mechanisms and their need for ink and paper and their resistance to even the most basic repair by users. And try to find a printer repair shop! They hardly exist. The attitude seems to be that if something goes wrong…
