copier: 1, liz: 0

today, i learned that when the copier at work says "check document", what it actually means is "someone didn't notice that their original got sucked in to be scanned but was never spit back out and is now jammed in the mechanicals and i won't copy till you take it out".

but it took several minutes for me to figure that out. or, i should say, for someone else to figure it out for me.

10 increasingly irritated button mashing minutes, to be exact.

let's face it, when i have a raging head cold and am attempting to get my lesson plans done so i can go home and sleep, the last thing i want to do is try to fix a copier for someone else. but, when i heard my name ringing out from the hallway of our tiny preschool center in a cry for help, i hauled myself off of my tiny foot high chair anyway to see what the issue was. all it said was "check document", and my not-so-tech-savvy co-worker in need of copies had already exhausted all her own ideas. so, i tried all the normal, easy stuff (cycle the power, check the settings, and so on). when none of that worked, my under-the-influence-of-cold-meds, sleep deprived, lesson-plan-focused brain shut down, and i began randomly pushing whatever buttons my fingers found, with another co-worker watching intently over my shoulder. i think she could sense a melt down approaching. (she wasn't wrong). as i neared the end of my rope, my hands were dramatically thrown in the air and i announced to my small but concerned audience that someone would have to call a tech. and i left my bewildered colleague in the hall to return to my lessons. but, just as i'm settling my feverish tush back into it's child sized pink chair, i hear a little voice behind me say to itself "maybe it's jammed".

yeah, okay. then it would have said "paper jam". or something like that.

then i hear something open, something ripped, something pulled on, and something pushed shut again. and then i hear her say "i got it!".

on any other day, i would have been annoyed with myself for not figuring that out. could it have been more obvious? but it appears that having a head full of mucous gives me a touch of humility (that i'm going to try to sustain, by the way), so i shouted in triumph for her win over the copier, then thanked her for doing what i couldn't seem to manage. i spent the rest of my time avoiding the copier, and any other technology that may have sent me over the edge.

but now i know. and if the copier ever says "check document" again, i'll be ready. or, at least, my co-worker will.