# The Box of Random Evil **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 3, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462 "2003-06-03T21:56:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![petre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@petre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/petre)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2003, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/61 "2003-06-05T21:21:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wilson \* > \*\ ***petre** , that was a fabulous first post! > I’m sort of in the industry - do you mind if I forward some of your ideas to the engineers? \*\* Sure, I think we’d all like to be on more friendly terms with our machinery. Maybe while it was getting your name, it could also bring up your usual use mode, and thereby remove the evil randomness of the device’s setting when you approach 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/62 "2003-06-06T02:03:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CurlyD \* > \*\*About 20 years ago someone posted this sign above our copier: > > **NOTICE** > > **THIS MACHINE SUBJECT TO BREAKDOWNS DURING PERIODS OF CRITICAL NEED!!** 🙂 yeah, that’s the one our copiers and printers need. The funny (aggravating) part is that if our IT guy even looks at them, they start behaving perfectly, until he goes and gets busy with something else. And he’s my BF, so you’d think they’d be nice to at least me? I’m telling you, they KNOW. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/63 "2003-06-06T02:10:16Z")
My computer must be related to the MOLE. It wouldn’t let me post to this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/64 "2003-06-06T02:11:42Z")
See, I meant the BORE. Have no idea what the MOLE is. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/65 "2003-06-06T03:55:41Z")
Hi, I’m **racinchikki**. You may remember me from such threads as “I Am Omnipotent” and… well, that was really it, but I talked about my Magical Anus of Power in it, so it should’ve been memorable… eh? Anyway, I work in the Copy Center of a Staples. I am the Queen of Copy Machines. Let me show you the hell I’m living in this week by telling you what machines I have and how they are acting now. Self Serve Department, we have three black and white machines for the general public to use. SS1 works just fine for now, thank god. SS2 is running low on toner, but we’re not allowed to replace it until it’s totally out. This being the case, nobody wants to use it because it’s printing in grey instead of black, so we get fifty thousand complaints a day and the toner that’s in it isn’t getting used up. It’s annoying, and rather O. Henrian. SS3 randomly decided to stop being a photocopier and start being a Blank Sheets of Paper Dispenser. I broke Cardinal Rule #52 by replacing its toner cartridge despite the lack of a Toner Is Out message; this did not help. Behind the counter, we have an Extremely Expensive Digital Color Copier that can also be used as a printer and a scanner. This thing is excellent, when it’s working - it can reproduce photographs such that they are nearly impossible to tell from the original, except for the way the ink reflects. I mean, you can tell it’s not a photo print, but only because photo prints are done in a different way on a different paper, you know what I mean? We also have a high-speed black and white copier that can do 12,000 copies in a couple hours. I’ve done 20,000-sheet jobs on a 4-hour shift while also helping other customers - when the high speed is behaving, it’s a wonderful thing. Of course, right now the color copier claims to be out of “fuser oil.” Nowhere in the manual is “fuser oil” listed as a part, a thing that needs to be replaced, or a cartridge that can be ordered. The store’s AS400 screen for ordering copy center supplies has nothing that could even be loosely interpreted as “fuser oil.” We are in a quandary. It smells rather like Bayou Skank. And the high speed is being a bitch, too. Every other person in the copy center, including the department lead, who has six years of experience over here, has been complaining of constant jams. It started out jamming only when doing double-sided, collated copies. Then it was double-sided OR collated copies, not necessarily both at once. In the past few days it has become so bad that it was impossible to run off one copy of one side of one sheet without getting jams in every possible place. The department lead shut the copier off and told us all not to use it until the Xerox technician orders a specific part and comes out to install it. Then tonight I got handed a huge job (four copies each of ten different 80-page booklets, collated and stapled), decided that the underpowered self serve machines wouldn’t do (there’s only one that’s working well enough for me to want to use it, I’d have to monopolize it all evening which would reduce our usable customer load to one machine, and they’ll only do 50 sheets at a time), and turned the high-speed back on for shits and giggles, not really expecting it to work properly. But you know what? That thing loves me, obviously. It’s never given me trouble even while everybody else was getting jams, and it did my big job tonight without a single complaint. I have Super Copier Mojo. I am the Queen of Everything. I deserve a huge raise and a tiara. A tiara with a little X for Xerox on it. Because I am the Copy Center Queen. I inspire loyalty, fealty and love in touchy bits of electronics. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/66 "2003-06-06T04:05:29Z")
Copier: ERROR. Open front panel and read next message. (operator complies) Copier: ERROR. Front panel is open. Close front panel. (operator complies) Copier: ERROR. Open front panel and read next message. Operator (under breath): Fuck! (complies) Copier: ERROR. Front panel is open. Close front panel. and so on, ultimately resulting in a swift kick, which resulted in a call to the service tech, which resulted in a confession by the _unnamed_ operator. Service tech: I don’t blame you. We see this a lot. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/67 "2003-06-06T06:16:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CanvasShoes \* > \*\*🙂 yeah, that’s the one our copiers and printers need. The funny (aggravating) part is that if our IT guy even looks at them, they start behaving perfectly, until he goes and gets busy with something else. And he’s my BF, so you’d think they’d be nice to at least me? > > I’m telling you, they KNOW. \*\* Stuff is like that around me too. Yesterday, I was walking past the Technology Manager’s office - this person is my manager’s manager - and she cries out for help. Her floor is covered in paper, all of which looks like someone was using the Playskool versions of Outlook and Word. The words are just freaking HUGE, to the point of only about eight letters fit across the page. She tells me she’s been trying to get the thing to work right all morning and asks if I’d have a look at it. I look at the printer, which had just finished printing out an email in approximately 350-point Arial. It apparently saw me and decided to shape up before I opened it up and put my cold fingers on its sensitive parts. After all, these things are networked, and by now, I’m sure it’s heard what I did to the color printer last month and that it’s still walking funny. You guessed it. I go through the motions of printing something and a perfectly-sized email pops out of the printer. She’s stunned, and prints something else. It too is normal. I guess the real test will be if things work right tomorrow. On the other hand, my powers are useless against the copier. Just useless. If you put something on the glass, it will demand you feed it 5x8" paper unless you mash your way through the menus on a not-very-sensitive touch-screen to convince it that there is no such size of paper sold at OfficeMax. So appeased, it will then deign to copy your item from the glass, but as far as I can tell, the machine will rotate the image 90 degrees each time you press the Green Button of Chance. If I think I can sneak up on it and just pop some pages into the feeder, it will scan them in, and midway through printing it will stop with a teeth-jarring “graack” and complain that it needs a new toner motor. When this happens, I retrieve my originals and slink off to Kinko’s. ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/68 "2003-06-06T06:26:47Z")
Oh yeah, you have SO got it **GPW**!!! That’s exactly how it happens. Another coworker and I were trying to print to two separate printers, both of us had deadlines (not that day thank God, but shortly enough so that we were a bit stressed). My printer a $1250 dollar “business” model that is supposedly designed for the stresses of reports and such that businesses need, frequently gets “paper hungry”. It will print 30 sheets of photos, and then suddenly a sheet of photos will end up spread across three pages. Or, as another poster stated, it will decide, in the MIDDLE of the print job that the AutoCAD drawing really doesn’t belong on 11x17 but will look much nicer with only half of it on an 8.5x11. “G” and I were freaking out, when suddenly Luke comes through the door. I swear all he did was look at our print jobs and then at the printers and both printers spit out PERFECT copies for the entire time he was there. Arggggghh!!! ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/69 "2003-06-06T06:42:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cicada2003 \* > \*\*See, I meant the BORE. Have no idea what the MOLE is. \*\* Mechanism Of Lesser Evil. It was a prototype we cancelled when the new Pandemonium II chips became available, allowing full scale evil to be placed in a small enough package. ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/70 "2003-06-06T09:43:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jayjay \* > \*\*Now I _know_ your location tag is accurate! You are the Dark Lord! > > [sub]Run away! Run away![/sub] \*\* Let’s just say that when I printed reports about how terribly the thing performed, I printed them on an HP we kept around for benchmarking. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/71 "2003-06-06T12:14:29Z")
We had a copy/fax machine from hell that would jam beyond belief on weekends. When we do most of our work. Especially on holiday weekends. When we couldn’t get anyone in to look at it until Tuesday. It’s really fun when the fax memory is full, and the fax machine will ring until someone picks it up and hangs up. Which of course nobody would do but me. Someone once went to fax something, and put in the number 567-xxxx. And pressed the button and walked away. Only they forgot to hit the fax button. We had 56 copies of the cover sheet. Fortunately, I walked in before the second sheet had copied. When we got our new copy/fax machine, the same fucking idiot jammed it the first time she used it. Of course, she calls me. I ask her what the hell she did. “NOTHING.” Yeah, right. ---
**Author:** ![Wintermute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@Wintermute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wintermute)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2003, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/72 "2003-06-06T12:56:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by petre \* > \*\*I’ve noticed that our copier at work has a power save mode. It doesn’t wait for you to hit a button though to power back up, all you have to do is walk near it. There’s a sensor eye at the front and when someone approaches it eerily activates in anticipation of its use. > > I’m wondering what additions might be in our near future. A scanner to read our ID badges as we approach? > > “Hello…Dave” > > “What?” > > “Making copies again I see. Remember, if you want me to collate your documents you need to tell me before you begin copying.” > > “Right…Is this some kind of…” > > “You’re never going to kick me again like you did last week are you…Dave?” > > “…no…” > > “Good. Now give me those financial reports to copy. You know, I could scan those and compile an analysis of them for you. In fact, I could do all of your job functions.” > > “…” > > “My primary paper tray is low. Why don’t you go ahead and fill it for me.” > > “…ok…” > > “Good Dave. Later, I’ll tell you how to fill my toner. We’re going to be good friends. Aren’t we, Dave? Muhahahaha” > > “yes…friends…heh…heh…_sob_” \*\* Best first post _ever_! LOL!! ---
**Author:** ![Peg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Peg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peg)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2003, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462/73 "2003-06-09T18:29:36Z")
I sent a friend at Death Star Xerox the OP and he said… > [@](#): > > The e-mail was really funny, we have actually > discussed some of the issues that he discusses > regarding the green button and the random changes in > paper size. We probably have the same machine, or at > least the same circuitry inside the machine. I would > forward the e-mail around Xerox but umm… some > others in the office have no sense of humor. At least the people at Xerox also the same problems, though I’m not sure that makes me feel any better. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-box-of-random-evil/179462.md?page=3)