A jammed photocopier is a terrible scene.
Yes, toner fumes fill the air, plastic doors are swung open, and crumpled papers lay wedged tightly in the Xerox machine’s Plinko board torso of hot springs and bright green clasps.
And there you stand at the scene of the crime in your pleated pants and button-down shirt. Yeah, I’m guessing the last thing you feel like doing right about now is dropping to your hands and knees and poking your fingers into a steaming engine of paper trays and twirly knobs.
That’s what makes it so great when a bugle blares softly the background and out pops the King Of The Office from around the cubicle wall. Yes, it’s Unjammer-Man, that young techie kid from the IT department who can de-clog the photocopier in no time flat and is happy to lend a hand.
Your lips curl into a big smile as you hug your expense report and watch him do the deed. Knobs are twiddled, clasps are fiddled, and soon the photocopier is humming like it’s a brand new day. Yes, now that someone’s unjammed the photocopier for you, you’re back in business, baby.
And you’re loving it.
AWESOME!
17 Comments
April 28, 2009 at 12:06 am
That kid is me!!!
April 28, 2009 at 9:28 am
We salute you, unjammer-man.
April 28, 2009 at 3:10 am
I would have to totally agree with you.
April 28, 2009 at 11:52 am
At my school, printers frequently get jammed, and all you need to do to unjam it is open one of the tray doors, and then close it. How easy is that! Dunno why it works, the machine just wants some love sometimes.
April 29, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Likewise. While I worked at my university’s computer lab, all you had to do for a “jam” was lift the top control panel part and shut it and the printer would fire up with no problem. Strange indeed.
January 13, 2010 at 4:21 am
Its simple, your printer is getting aged and its sensors are sticking. When you shut it close it gets loose. Or its application has a timing problem and reports a jam in a normal print routine and it requires door to open and close to recheck if paper is still there.
April 28, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Ah yes… the look of the business man as he bangs on the copier to try and get it to work is priceless. Even better is when I walk up, turn one knob and its working again.. haha. that really gets them going.
April 28, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I know how to use computers, open them up, replace parts, but I have not figuered out the printer still.
April 28, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I really get pissed of when my secretary said “jamm”
April 28, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I’ve used these tips for my bedroom and now I feel more relxed than ever, thanks!
April 28, 2009 at 7:05 pm
The dreaded paper jam!!!
April 30, 2009 at 5:01 am
I wish we had someone around to unjam ours all the time. SO many doors and knobs, and when you think you’ve cleared it… it STILL says JAM! Can be as easy as opening and shutting doors, but a lot of the time, we spend an age trying to find the jam.
April 30, 2009 at 6:39 am
It takes a lot of courage, but I usually try to work the jam paper thing out first. “You can do it”, I tell myself. The first fifty seconds go pretty well – I just follow instructions and it seems like it’s working. But then life, oh, life, you know what it is, it slaps you in the face especially when you don’t expect it. And then things go wrong. And then you end up spending more than fifty seconds. And then people come next to you, and they say, “What’s wrong with the printer? What did you do?”, and you have to explain, you need to defend yourself. “I was just trying to make it work. I was just trying to avoid calling the printer dude. It’s the crisis, you know.” But people still judge you. And you go back to your desk with an horrible feeling of guilt, without ever getting the copy you really wanted in the very first place.
May 15, 2009 at 2:36 am
hehe this is great especially if its your own fault its jammed
May 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I am the Unjammer-woman at my office. We have had 3 copy machines, and I am the only one who can get them to work correctly…
I unjam, therefore I am irreplaceable!~
June 4, 2009 at 11:57 am
I’m a jam and runner. There was a copy room when I was student teaching. If it got jammed I would just grab my stuff and head for the hills.
April 20, 2010 at 11:48 am
I loved being the JamMaster. Or JamMistress. It was like being a diagnostician at the Mayo Clinic. Everyone would come to me when they’d effed up the copier and I’d sigh like it was such an imposition for an important person like me, and go fix it.