Last Tuesday I had big plans of much accomplishment to be achieved! Yet fate seemed to have other plans. First up on my agenda; print the order receipts to have their credit cards processed and then the orders filled. So I set up my laptop to the printer and get it going. While that’s happening I’m getting my usual breakfast (1 whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter on it [although today I will admit I’m having a donut])) and checking messages on the work phones. Get back to the work desktop and look at the printer. It’s been printing juuuust fine, but its out of ink so all these papers are half blank. Drat..
Anyone ‘whose worked in an office has experienced this. But as I search for more ink I realize we are out. Undaunted, I decide I’ll send my assistant (Patty) to the nearest Office store to buy ink when she get here and busy myself with other work chores. Patty arrives early, good sign! But while she’s gone to fetch more ink the printer makes an odd sound. Bad me, I’ve left the printer case open and it tried to reset cartridges. I close it up but when we put in the new ink the printer has problems with aligning.
Now shutting it down will correct THAT loop but will also put the printer into a restart loop we actively avoid if we can by NEVER shutting it off! Although sometimes we get lucky and it just starts up normally. Sometimes. So I chance it… and do NOT get lucky. Its in the scanner issue loop. Sigh. Waste 20 minutes hoping it will fix itself if I turn it off & on enough times. Nope. Waste another 10 minutes searching web for a reset fix. I do find a fix, but need tools to open up printer to clean inner scanner head. Grrrr… and I realize with all the time wasted its easier to just go home to get MY printer.
So off to home I go (5 minutes away). Once back with my printer, I re-print the morning work from my laptop. Yay I finally feel like my day is progressing even though I am now 2 hrs behind my fantasy schedule! I go to hook up work computer to my printer to charge the credit cards and it says it needs the disk. The disk I left at home. It also suggests I try the internet. I do & find an install program on the HP site. I try to download the install from HP home page. It tells me my OS isn’t compatible. And tells me my OS is a 64 bit. So I hit the back button & try the Install for 64 bit. STILL not compatible. WHAT!!! Wasted 30 minutes trying to find a way around it before giving up and processing these orders using my iPhone’s Square app & printing receipts off my laptop computer.
My assistant fills the orders and I try to do what non-printing work I can on the work computer. Printing what I need off the laptop computer we make the day work the best we can. We get the orders processed and out just barely!! ALL the other work I’d planned on doing barely got touched. Which means I take it home and try to see what I can accomplish at home. Again, sigh.
Just when I’m about to leave for the day, during the tidy up the office part of leaving. I plug the OLD printer to the work computer & turn it on so I can leave a note for the boss not to use it when she gets home. And it fires up as if NOTHING had happened!!
The amount of cursing is only balanced by the heavy sense of amused irony.