Copier woes, or "It was working before!"

[depechemodefan]

We have only 2 copiers in our new remodeled building, when before we had about 9. Anyway, I'm on the third floor and I see this woman making a lot of copies. She's copying from different books, and I see her go back and forth from a table in the alcove where the copier is. And there is this guy just standing around. About 5 min. latter the guy comes up to me and ask if he could use the copier. I said there was no time limit, that he just have to go to the second floor if he wants to make a copy of wait for her to finish. He goes back to standing around. Twenty or 10 min. latter the woman comes up to me and says the copier stopped working. All I can do is call IT and tell her to go to the second floor. I tell the guy the copier is down, he would have to go to the second floor. He nods and wanders off to a corner.

Anyway, the woman than says, "Are you going to refund me my $.75?" Copies are $.15 each. I'm thinking, ok, you make one copy and see it doesn't copy, and try a second copy, and it doesn't copy, maybe you should stop copying. I said I would add money to her card and I asked why did she make 5 copies if it wasn't working. She said, "It was making copies before." I could see if she was just feeding material in the machine and couldn't stop it on time, or just wasn't paying attention because the machine was doing it's deal. But putting a book down, making a copy, and picking up the copy to make sure it copied and then keep on doing it when it was blank...seems kind of stupid.

This also reminds of another time this woman was putting resume paper in the copier. I wasn't paying attention but I noticed she made some copies, went back to the computer, and was making other copies. She comes to me saying the machine wasn't working. After looking at it I see a resume is jammed in the copier. I see she opened the copier to add resume paper. I tell her that she can't use resume paper since it's thicker than regular paper and our copiers arn't calibrated for that. She said, "It was copying before!"

[Trayol]

That's when you reply "So you're going to pay for damaging the copier?" at which point she'll scitter away.

[Apathy]

You can usually extinguish behavior in animals in a very small amount of trials if they're on a constant reward schedule. (If it always works, and it stops, it'll only take animals a couple tries to realize this.)

However, people are stupider than animals, in my experience. I'm surprised this lady stopped after five times and didn't resort to hitting the machine or something.

I don't know what isn't working in SC's heads that makes it impossible to comprehend that things sometimes change.

[JoitheArtist]

ah yes....I used to work in a library, and our desk was responsible for making sure the copiers were running. Even aside from my numbskull coworkers who ALWAYS managed to spill toner everywhere (replacing toner is not that hard, people), the people trying to use the machines were....special.

My two favs: I walk down to check on the copiers one day. One of them has a sign taped to it. Did anyone report a malfunctioning copier to us? No. Did we have signs up telling them to do so? Yes. Is the circulation desk only 15 feet away? Yes. But I digress....anyway, this sign cracked me up. It read, "This copier is out of work." Yes. We have an unemployed copier, apparently.

Another time, someone did come up to report a machine that had jammed. No biggie, it happens, just gotta open the copier up and get all the paper out. But this time, when I get to the machine, I can smell something. Something burning. I open up the machine to see that the paper is covered with so much toner that it has MELTED onto the heated roll! MELTED. No way can I just pull the paper out, the tech needs to come in to clean it. I ask the kid what he was copying. It was...the back of a BLACK book. No text. No images. Just black hardbound book. Why, you ask? To get the scanner code off the back, of course!