I am in an abusive relationship....

.....with the printer at my work.

No its not the one on the left, its the little one on the right hiding...waiting to unleash it cruel games on anyone who tries to print off it. That flip down tray that is open will no longer close. It hangs open like a pervert's fly.

I tell you that machine just loves to PISS ME OFF and once it pushed me the edge and I scream at it or burst into tears THEN it will play nice and print.

Holy water has no effect on this hell beast.

I have to print all the medication / treatment / flow sheets for the nursing facility I work at at the end of the month. It takes roughly 4 hours to do this, if I can get that bleeping (deleted) to print for me.


I work remotely on the weekends which means the nursing staff has to change the colored paper for me. My office is an old smoke room, narrow and filled with lots of hot computers. In the summer with no A/C on my office is roughly the temperature of the SUN.

The printer loves to cook those poor nurses who have to change the paper for me. It will act up and be bad till there in serious danger of heatstroke. I tell you this printer is evil.


Some of the tortures it has inflicted on me include:

 printing 3 pages a min vs it usual PPM.

Refusing to print from my computer, but it would from co-workers.

Loves to fold origami with the paper before it puts it to rest in the printed bin.

Running out of ink and not informing me. I discover 400 pages later its empty and when I replace the ink cartridge with a brand new one it says ...."LOW INK"

and my all time favorite that it LOVES to do is spit every 12th page up and over the paper guard and sending it sailing to the floor. Meaning I have to stand there and babysit it as it prints. If I look away it will send a flurry of pages flying.

I work pm/nights so I am alone with this monstrosity. It knows it can be as mean as it wants to me and I have to take it. There is no battered-by-printers support group for women I can call to get out of this abusive relationship.

The Pm shift is used to hearing me talking to it. They probably think I am nuts.

P: Alright you ...be nice nice tonight and print for me.

printer:

P: I am NOT going to let you win this fight. DO your job and print. You have paper, you have ink, and I have sent the print job.

printer:

P: AAAUUGH!!

Co-worker wandering in: want me to kick it?

P: that is what it wants. If I talk to dirty to it, it will print. Or cry it loves to makes people cry.

Co-worker patting printer: common little printer, you can do it print.

printer:

P shutting office door and the addressing printer: LISTEN YOU ()(&*^%$##$%^* PRINT WHAT I SENT YOU!!!

printer: hums happily and begins printing.

Co-worker laughing: Oh you like it rough you little bad printer.

Coworker shakes their head and leaves, I follow them to the hallway and grab a bag of chips from the machine and return to office. There is one piece of paper in the tray and the rest of my print job is folded into paper air planes and is all over the floor.

P: Are you kidding me??!! I want out of this relationship!