Poor Copy Machine.

We have a fantastic copy machine at work.  It is a real workhorse that holds a ream of  8.5 x 11 paper in each of 3 trays, plus a ream of legal size in the fourth tray.  This modern marvel copies, sorts, collates, scans, faxes and dispenses coffee from a special stainless steel pot that sits on the left hand side.  Well, I may have exaggerated about the coffee.  We have to make that ourselves and pour our own from the thermos carafe.

 And the coffee station is nowhere near the copier. 

But the thing does just about everything else and is such a fine color copier that nearly everybody in the building runs by our office when they need a special job run.  We can scan in images and send email from the copier in TIFF, JPEG or Adobe formats.   We have forms in the document server that print at the push of a button The company that gives service to the machine has been known to send out a service technician just because they haven't heard from us in a while and wanted to be sure things were going well.  Oh, and while on site, they may as well check and clean the device.  No charge.  The company does not have an X in the name.  I will not tell the actual corporation - but the name rhymes with havin'.  As in, I'm not havin' any other brand of copier on the premises.  Others may extol the joys of the ex-rocks copier.  I'll keep what I got. 

All this to say that some folks ran into a panic situation this morning.  The FDLE employee who works out of our office went to the copier to run some forms through.  He picked the finished job out of the paper tray and then went "Uh Oh!" 

"What's wrong", someone asked.

I wasn't really listening, being concentrated on researching some stuff on my computer.  I kind of picked up the problem by osmosis.  It seemed there was a paper clip showing up on each page of the finished copy.  Right about the middle of the page.  Someone said  to open the document feeder and see if a clip had fallen in - Another person said to stop running copies in case there was a clip inside the machine and we caused a jam, or worse - by continuing to run copies.   Another voice chimed in to say we needed to call for service before we messed the machine up. 

At that point, I sat up and looked over at the briefing table where a couple of folks were inspecting the flawed copy.  One of the employees who knows me pretty well saw me looking on and said - Oh, it's April first.... April Fools!  That was you, wasn't it, Nancy!  I had to admit it was.  I had gone to the machine and put a paper clip on the glass and then pushed 5 and print.  Opening the paper drawer, I returned the 5 sheets to the top of the stack and closed the drawer.  All I had to do  from that point  on was wait!  And not laugh.

It was funny and fun.  I tip my hat to  our daughter in Alabama.  It was her idea first.