There are certain pieces of technology that appear to understand when they are needed most.
Your phone knows when the battery should suddenly drop from 34 per cent to 6 per cent. Your laptop knows the perfect moment to announce that updates are available. But nothing possesses a more finely tuned sense of human desperation than the home printer. For months it will sit quietly in the corner doing absolutely nothing, an enormous plastic ornament occupying half a desk and occasionally flashing a little green light to remind you that it still exists. You don’t bother it. It doesn’t bother you. Then one morning you desperately need to print a single sheet of paper. Nothing complicated. One page. Black and white. You’ve got six minutes before you need to leave the house. You confidently press Print because you’ve owned this printer for four years and successfully printed things before. At precisely that moment, the printer detects urgency in the atmosphere, wakes from its months-long sleep and decides that today is the day it will destroy you.
The first thing it does is nothing. Absolutely nothing. You press Print again because apparently you believe the button may not have understood the seriousness of the first request. Still nothing. You stare at the printer. The printer stares back through a tiny blinking light. You check the computer and discover the document is apparently “Printing”. Excellent. Except it isn’t. The printer is sitting three feet away making no attempt whatsoever to participate. So you press Print for a third time, thereby unknowingly creating three copies of the document that will all emerge simultaneously at some completely unpredictable point in the future. You check the printer queue and find an ancient document from eight months ago listed above yours. You don’t remember printing it. You barely remember creating it. Nevertheless, this forgotten PDF has apparently established itself as the legal gatekeeper for all future printing and nothing can happen until its demands have been met.
Eventually you discover the problem. The printer is offline. This is confusing because the printer is physically sitting directly in front of you. You can see it. You could touch it. From your perspective, it has never been more obviously present. Yet according to the computer, the printer has apparently left society and cannot currently be contacted. You switch it off and back on, mankind’s most reliable technological ritual. Lights flash. Machinery whirs. Hope returns. The printer spends approximately forty seconds making increasingly elaborate mechanical noises that strongly suggest something productive is happening. Gears turn. Rollers spin. Something moves internally from left to right several times. Then everything stops. Nothing comes out. You check the computer again. Printer unavailable. You glance across the room at the printer, which is so aggressively available that you’re considering carrying it over and placing it directly on top of the laptop.
By now you’ve entered troubleshooting mode, which means randomly changing things until the machine either works or becomes somebody else’s problem. You disconnect the Wi-Fi. Reconnect it. Turn the printer off. Turn the laptop off. Turn everything back on in a different order like you’re attempting to open an Egyptian tomb. At some point you unplug the printer from the wall and leave it disconnected for ten seconds, not because you understand why this might help but because ten seconds feels sufficiently punitive. You reconnect it. The printer awakens again and immediately begins cleaning something. Why are you cleaning yourself now? Nobody requested maintenance. This is not a spa day. There is a document that needs printing and the printer has decided this is the ideal moment to conduct internal housekeeping.
Then the message appears.
LOW INK.
Fine. Which colour?
MAGENTA.
You’re printing a black-and-white document.
Apparently this is irrelevant. The printer has decided that without sufficient magenta ink, the black words you’re trying to print cannot safely exist. You examine the document. There is nothing magenta in it. There isn’t anything remotely colourful. It’s approximately 400 words of plain black text. You could write the entire thing with a biro before magenta becomes relevant. Nevertheless, the printer has rules. You search through a drawer and discover several old ink cartridges, none of which fit the printer currently sitting on your desk because naturally you’ve somehow retained cartridges for every printer you’ve ever owned except this one.
You now have three minutes before you’re supposed to leave. The situation has become personal. You no longer merely want the document. You need to defeat the printer. You open menus you’ve never seen before. Printer properties. Device settings. Maintenance. Advanced settings. Somewhere inside this machine there must surely be a button marked “JUST PRINT THE BLOODY THING”, but apparently manufacturers have chosen not to include one. You find settings for paper type, quality, scaling and something called spooler services. You don’t know what a spooler is. Twenty minutes ago you didn’t need to know what a spooler was. Yet here you are, suddenly pursuing an unpaid qualification in domestic print infrastructure because one sheet of A4 refuses to come out of a box.
Then, unexpectedly, the printer starts moving.
You freeze.
A sheet of paper emerges.
This is it.
Victory.
Except it isn’t your document. It’s the thing you tried to print eight months ago. The ancient job has finally completed its journey through the queue, arriving months after anybody wanted it like a postcard sent home by someone who has already returned from holiday. Then another page appears. Same document. Then another. You suddenly remember pressing Print several times earlier and realise the machine has stored every desperate click as a contractual obligation. The printer, which five minutes ago claimed to be offline, unavailable and apparently critically deficient in magenta, is now enthusiastically producing paperwork nobody wants.
You cancel everything. The printer continues printing. You press Cancel on the computer. Another page emerges. You press the physical button on the printer. Another page. At this point you could remove the paper tray entirely and the printer would probably begin manufacturing its own paper out of spite. Eventually it stops. Silence returns. You cautiously send the correct document again. One copy. Black and white. Every setting checked. You press Print and step backwards as though you’ve just armed an explosive device.
The printer hums.
The rollers turn.
One sheet enters.
And there it is.
Your document.
Perfect.
You pick it up with the satisfaction of someone who has personally overcome a major engineering challenge. It has taken considerably longer than printing one page should ever take, but you’ve done it. You have conquered the machine. You switch everything off, grab your keys and head for the door, late but victorious.
The printer sits quietly behind you.
Watching.
Waiting.
Because it knows something you don’t.
Three months from now, you’ll desperately need to print another document.
One page.
Probably in a hurry.
You’ll press Print.
Nothing will happen.
You’ll look at the screen.
And there, waiting for you, will be the message:
PAPER JAM.
There is no paper jam.
There never was.
The printer can smell fear.
