Knowing how to communicate with your printer will save you a lot of money

My printer has a life of its own. It even talks. In a nice female voice it tells me: “Printing job started,” “printing job finished,” “please refill paper,” “paper jam.” It only wants to be plugged into one specific USB-hub, if I choose another one, it pretends to be a different printer and my computer cannot find it anymore.

It even found a friend – my vacuum cleaner. Whenever I plug the vacuum cleaner into the outlet next to the printer, the printer turns itself on and, in delight, it starts spitting out empty pages. It doesn’t do the same thing, when I plug in my reading light there, so it must have a special relationship with the vacuum cleaner.

My printer is also very creative at times. Then, it prints things triple the size, uses colours at random, and sometimes it even places the texts on the page in a very inventive way. Usually, it does that whenever I’m printing a page that I need to turn in to my professors.
Sometimes, the printer is on strike and refuses to do its job. Then I get a message on my computer, which reads: “Couldn’t communicate with the printer.” A lot of times this has happened, after I printed out 10 pages without communication problems.

Usually it helps to keep the printer happy by giving it lots of white paper (it doesn’t like recycled paper and destroys the pages) and pretending to refill the cartage regularly. It often tells me that it’s empty, even though it isn’t. Then, I have to take out the old one and put it back in.

But sometimes, the only thing that helps is threatening violence. Then I have to tell it: “Listen now, we are on the fourth floor and if you don’t do what you’re supposed to, you’ll fly out of the window.”

Rarely, my threats even need to be accompanied by pressing the reset button or cutting the power supply. Then, it usually turns my desk into a discotheque with all its lights blinking before finally giving in. But, in the end, I can always rely on my printer.

The other day, my boss asked me: “Do you know something about printers? Mine broke down.” I tried all the tricks I knew from mine, even the threatening, but it wouldn’t work again. I even took it apart, to see if there was a piece of paper stuck in it. But there wasn’t and the printer wouldn’t work again. In the end, we had to call the technical support, who took 5 minutes to fix it. But the bill was 30 Euros.

Even though my printer causes me trouble constantly, I’m happy with it because I know how to communicate with it. I don’t want one, where I have to call the technical support and spend millions of dollars on it.