YOUR printer hates you but you need a hard copy of your boarding pass. These are the six stages of misery you’ll go through to get it:
Stage one: set it up
Used infrequently and hidden away, its plug socket stolen by a charger, you’ll need to find your printer and clear space to balance it on a table and bring it back to life. Feel your tension build as it clunks and whines ominously while trying to remember what it is, what it does and why it’s so angry at you.
Stage two: get it connected
A simple cable connecting to your laptop? So 00s. Now you have to establish a wifi connection while inputting your password using cursors on an LCD screen. You do this with the PDF of the manual open on your phone, and are rewarded by the printer downloading a firmware update.
Stage three: print
Your chest’s tightening and your eyeballs have a pulse. You press print and nothing happens. You do it again. And again. Now there are six jobs in the queue. You are informed there’s no black ink. You chose to combine colours and whimper ‘thank God’ as the machine stirs into action, printing in a mere 23 minutes.
Stage four: disappointment
Your one-page document is spread over four sheets of A4, printed in a convivial brown. Trying to piece it together achieves nothing. You did not choose this format or want to print those characters. The urge to tie the printer to your car’s back bumper and take it for a little drive resurfaces.
Stage five: repeat the cycle
Swallowing your fury, you begin the process from step three, with each new print sending you back to uncheck boxes like ‘A3 paper’, ‘400% magnification’, and ‘print on both sides’. You format a new document, entitled: “Die, printer, die!’
Stage six: wait for a teenager
It still won’t f**king print. The plane leaves in two hours and 40 minutes. Your teenager arrives, munching a cereal bar and asks why the printer’s out. They fiddle with their phone, nonchalantly replace the empty black ink cartridge and press print. 13 copies print perfectly.
