Man vs. machine
If my frustrations, anxieties and worries were to collect together and take a shape, it would be rectangular with a slightly sloping front. If they were all to be painted a color, it would be a mundane gray-white. This figure would be not much to look at on the outside - just another conventional thing. But this is no ordinary inanimate object.
If this thing had a name, it would be the HP printer that resides in the back corner of the office that I work at. Like a good gladfly, the printer remains out of eyesight but continuously makes its presence known with shrieks and wails. Its screen shoots out taunts continuously - "paper jams," "paper tray 2 open" and worse of all, "order ink cartridge."
After all, no amount of ink or paper can satisfy it. The machine continously churns out its malice, always hungry for more. Ink cartridges are guzzled lighting quick, the fusion transfer kit turns white paper into pink, the powdery printer ink is spewed everywhere. Because of all of this and because this menace is my responsibility, the printer has become the symbol and the reminder of all my shortcomings and uncertainties.
A man at my office once jokingly said I need to make nice with the printer but truthfully all I want to do is kick it.
But I can't; that plastic hide is too hard and resilent to take a punch. The only one who would end up feeling pain would be me. Prehaps one of these days this beast and I will call a truce or even better I will find the will to silence its insults that nip away away at my confidence for good.
If this thing had a name, it would be the HP printer that resides in the back corner of the office that I work at. Like a good gladfly, the printer remains out of eyesight but continuously makes its presence known with shrieks and wails. Its screen shoots out taunts continuously - "paper jams," "paper tray 2 open" and worse of all, "order ink cartridge."
After all, no amount of ink or paper can satisfy it. The machine continously churns out its malice, always hungry for more. Ink cartridges are guzzled lighting quick, the fusion transfer kit turns white paper into pink, the powdery printer ink is spewed everywhere. Because of all of this and because this menace is my responsibility, the printer has become the symbol and the reminder of all my shortcomings and uncertainties.
A man at my office once jokingly said I need to make nice with the printer but truthfully all I want to do is kick it.
But I can't; that plastic hide is too hard and resilent to take a punch. The only one who would end up feeling pain would be me. Prehaps one of these days this beast and I will call a truce or even better I will find the will to silence its insults that nip away away at my confidence for good.
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