The Box of Random Evil is a multitasking monstrosity spawned by the Xerox corporation. It is approximately three feet high by three feet wide by two feet deep, and every cubic inch of it stuffed with loathing and resentment for its lot in life. It is a combination photocopier, fax machine, and network printer. All of the computers in the clinic send their documents to this…device…for printing, which it does first by excreting a totally useless printed document announcing the filename of the printed document that is about to come next from within its nether regions. It is also the only copier in the clinic, and the only fax machine.
One machine to rule them all, and in the darkness…bind them.
It lurks outside my office door, in a hallway that connects two longer hallways in the clinic. My doorway is immediately opposite the Box of Random Evil, and its size is sufficient that if one or two individuals are standing in front of the machine, it can make a graceful exit from my office nearly impossible. Because of its multi-tentacled reach into the working lives of every in the clinic, the space in front and around the Box of Random Evil is what you might call a high traffic area.
But it is not because of the heavy traffic in front of my office door that I resent this infernal machine. No, I detest this abominable Frankenstein’s monster of silicon and plastic because of its approach to performing the duties for which it was allegedly designed.
When you copy a document, you are supposed to push a large green button to initiate the photocopying process. Sometimes the Green Button of Chance will work with just one push…sometimes it will require two pushes. It is impossible to predict in advance which number of button pushes is required to kickstart the Satanic contraption into performing its base function.
It will never require more than two. This important fact leads me to believe that this particular quirk is not because of a stuck button. If it was a genuinely stuck button, I think there would be instances where more than two pushes of the button were required.
But no…always one or two, and it is a gamble as to which one it will require.
Sometimes it will go for long periods requiring only one push. Then, when it senses that your awareness of this particular quirk has subsided into the upper reaches of your unconsciousness, it will flip some bit of internal logic circuitry and demand that just for this one particular transaction, you must push the green button twice.
The nature of my job requires me to use the photocopying aspect of the Box of Random Evil frequently throughout the day. It is obvious that I am thousands of miles away from the environmentally-conscious land of Oregon…we kill lots of trees at our hospital. Every patient visit results in multiple copies of virtually everything associated with the visit: audiograms, tympanograms, record sheets of DPOAE and ABR evaluations, hearing aid stuff, insurance data, patient data, etc. And for each of these visits to the Box of Random Evil after I finish with a patient, I must grapple with the pathologically sadistic Green Button of Chance. I swear, it’s like Chinese water torture.
But that’s not all.
At random moments, the copier machine will bring up a display box when I have pressed the Green Button of Chance asking me to confirm the changes I have made to the stock within its paper trays. I am to select from a binary set of choices: plain white paper, or colored paper. Keep in mind that I have not changed the paper or opened any of the trays, I have merely pushed the Green Button of Chance. But somehow the machine occasionally interprets my request for photocopying as an announcement that I have made some fundamental alteration to the nature of its paper load. This particular dialog box will pop up an average of three or four times a day for me.
But that’s not all.
At random moments, the photocopier will alter the size of your output document by some playfully chosen percentage. Sometimes it will come out as 70% original size, other times it will come out 125% original size. Sometimes it will cut off the side thirds of the original document, making the final output looking like it had been yanked through a shredder. Sometimes it will insert dark lines across strategically chosen portions of the output document, making it look like you have chosen to copy your form onto a stationery with a zebra motif.
But that’s not all.
There are the paper jamming mechanisms that have been thoughtfully built into the Box of Random Evil by the sociopathic Xerox engineers, who are undoubtedly not only bereft of regard for their fellow man, but also bereft of any common sense regarding the proper design of a photocopier. For in the Box of Random Evil, the photocopied papers are shitted out through a bewilderingly complex and byzantine electronic colon, and passes through a number of choke points where the Box of Random Evil holds a lottery on whether or not it will have a paper jam. Once your number comes up–presto!–we have copier constipation.
I have found no fewer than five different points at which a paper jam has occurred. FIVE! Who built this thing, a gang of blind monkeys drunk on Kahlua?
The Box of Random Evil averages about three paper jams a day. No kidding.
There have been calls to Xerox for servicing. A guy comes out and performs some kind of toner-based rain dance in front of the machine, which will then proceed to work perfectly for about three hours after he leaves. Then the whole damn thing starts all over again.
I hate, hate, HATE this thing. And I especially hate its lurking presence outside my door.
