Printers have been the bane of many office workers’ existence since the dawn of the printing age, with networking issues, mechanical failures, and permanently low toner/ink levels making tasks that should be easy and simple incredibly frustrating instead.
Back in ye olden days of the 1990s, this print room worker managed the printing room of a shipping operation, operating the company’s large and finicky dot matrix printers.
If you’ve ever worked in a traditional warehousing or shipping joint, you’re probably familiar with dot matrix printers; these printers use the (often) blue and white lined paper with sheets that are interconnected and have holes down the sides that can be torn off. They’re still commonly used for pack lists at distribution companies and other similar entities.
But, back in 1990, the machines printing these were more primitive, much larger, and probably more prone to failure, requiring a worker or two to manage the machines and keep things operating and running smoothly.
This worker received detailed training when they started, working as a two-man team with another worker in order to ensure there was no downtime during required printing times. When their coworker handed in their duo, the pair attempted to train a new hire who proved to be too unmotivated.
For some reason, this led the company to lay off the print team altogether and bring in two other nepo-hire workers from elsewhere in the business. It was easy to see why someone was eager to get rid of these two workers since they, too, proved to be incredibly lazy. Despite the worker’s best efforts to train them, the pair refused to listen to anything; this would set the company up for massive and expensive failure a short time later…
