Underbelly Archives

I am in my local Staples in Brooklyn to make three copies of a page from my tax return. I find the only working photocopy machine sitting amongst the others that sit idle and useless like shipwrecked hulks.

I put my debit card into the reader so that the machine can deduct the thirty cent payment for the three copies from my card and then I place my original in the feeder. The machine coyly beeps at me as I select three copies. I then push “Start” and it roars into action.

One copy is spit out…then another….and another…..

..and then….another and  ANOTHER! The machine is spitting out copy after copy and I only wanted three! The reader indicates that it is is quickly deducting money from my paltry bank account and I frantically press the stop button over and over again.

I press “interrupt”….I press “reset”….I press “clear”…and the machine, like an unstoppable doomsday robot keeps going and going, and seems hellbent on decimating the fourteen dollars I have left in my checking account.

There is no staff member in sight and I am in full panic. I know what it’s like to feel like a pathetic loser, trying to complain after the fact to bitter customer hating workers that “The machine took my money”…and what a hassle it would be to get it back. If possible at all.

As I smash my fingers over and over again into the stop button, I contemplate the miserable discussion that would take place with the Staples store manager. I decide then that even in my impecunious state, that it won’t be worth it to have such a conversation if the charges are less than seven dollars.

The manager would ask me, as if I am a child, if I pressed the correct buttons and  he would then press the start button and the machine would make a single perfect copy, and he would say “well…the machine seems to be working fine now”…..leaving me feeling like an idiot.

Of course, at this moment, the machine was NOT working fine and was continuing to spit out copies….I had now repeatedly pressed every button on the control panel that could possibly make it stop, and as I then futilely tried to eject my card from the card reader I could almost hear the great mechanical beast laughing at me, hearing it say, “HAhahahaHA!…You foolish human! Is that the best you’ve got? Did you really think I would let you have your card back? HAHAHAhahaHAHAHA! Pathetic human!”

The output was now indicating that 50 copies had been made and was still climbing.  I was desperately pushing buttons while turning my head looking for a staff member to call out to for help….someone to at least witness the carnage as it was happening…..

Out of options, I started looking for the power cord. If I could find it I could yank it out of the wall and stop the roaring, relentless beast in it’s tracks.

But I couldn’t find the cord…it must have been behind the machine, which now had started sorting the copies as they were coming out into some randomly collated stacks.

Then, in an adrenaline fueled moment of desperation, I acquired the strength of ten skinny, nebbishy, neurotic cartoonists and I pushed my body against the machine and moved it just enough to see the power cord, and began tugging on it frantically. But though I yanked on it with all I had, it wouldn’t budge.

The copies kept coming….and the machine kept humming it’s evil war cry interspersed with the dreaded “Ka-chung! Ka-chung! Ka-chung!” noise it made as each copy was spit out, sounding like the footsteps of an advancing army of robot orcs.

Finally, defeated, I collapsed, bent over face down and exhausted and whimpering, on the hot, vibrating lid of the beast.

Then, all of the sudden…there was silence. The machine just stopped. Feeling like the survivor of a tornado emerging from the rubble, I lifted my head in a daze.

I glanced down at the control panel which was blinking a message. The Doomsday Robot Beast from Hell was making a request….actually….it was more of a demand: “ADD MORE PAPER”.

Trembling, I moved my hand over to the card reader and tried one last time to eject my card. Now that the machine was not in copying mode it released my card. The card reader indicated the charges were $6.90

I stuffed my card into my wallet and  went to throw in the trash all the useless copies the machine had stacked in it’s sorter. Then, when I turned around, I saw a woman loading paper into the machine and getting ready to make copies.  I shouted a warning over to her, “Ma’m, I wouldn’t use that machine if I were you! It isn’t working right!”  She just pressed the start button, and said, “Well, I’ll take my chances. All I need is one copy…”

Yeah right.