Sometimes life takes advantage of me.   And by life, I mean our extremely dubious copier, whom I lovingly refer to as “Carol”.   Carol has served our office well making copies, printing, scanning, sorting, and even stapling. Only recently, has Carol let her mood swings and personal life affect her work.  She crunches paper angrily, sends us error messages, screeches, and sprinkles black toner on our white pants.

Almost daily, I yell choice phrases at Carol.  “Dag-nab-bit, Carol!” I have even swung a few punches and faked a few Chuck Norris uppercuts at her face paper feed.

You know that feeling of gripping a Louisville slugger so tightly in your hands that your palms sweat and the adrenaline rushes to the back of your eyes until tears form? Even more familiar is the feeling of swinging that slugger and hitting a baseball, mailbox, or slamming it so hard into the keypad of a copy machine that sparks burst out of the paper tray.  The past few weeks, I have dreamt about the ultimate destruction of our copy machine.  Whether it’s the apocalypse or a band of zombies, Carol is going down someday.

Until that day, straighten up, Carol…we have work to do.