Wednesday, September 26, 2018

A Crisis

We've become entirely dependent on technology. Not even dinosaurs like me are immune. I'm actually very tech-oriented. If I can find some way to use my computer, I'm up for it. If the display in my half-room worked, I would have used it yesterday. But these are minor things. I can always write words on the board and describe what they mean, rather than showing pictures or videos.

But really, that's small potatoes compared to a copying machine. Every teacher on God's green earth makes copies these days. Without copies, we'd have to go back to the dark ages of using whatever is in the bookroom. In our building, the bookrooms are filled with students. We've finally got air-conditioning in these windowless classrooms, and from time to time it works.

We do have an abundance of copying machines in our building. I mostly hang around the language department, because I have a drawer there. We have a copying machine, and a Risograph for high volume jobs. Regrettably, the riso has dropped dead. This is not such a terrible crisis for me at least, because I can always go to my actual department, ESL, and use their Risograph.  Except that one doesn't work either.

Lately I've been sneaking into the English department and asking whether they mind. They say go ahead, but it doesn't make good copies. It misses letters here and there, but I've been pretty satisfied. I mean, it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, which is my next choice. Now math teachers are coming into the language department asking to use our machine. I wonder where their next stop is when I tell them it's dead. Maybe I'll follow the next one who comes in, just in case English proves a dead end next time.

In our school, we don't need to use department machines all the time. We have a central copying center. It's great. You just drop off whatever it is you want copied, and in two days, you get it back, all stapled and collated and neatly banded by rubber, or whatever those things are made of nowadays. The rubber band is so big you can go home and equip your slingshot with it, if you are so inclined.

I left something there last Friday, and I was going to pick it up today. But I had a rude awakening around 10:30 AM, when people started approaching me and saying the copy center wasn't accepting copies until October 1st. That's a disaster. There's just about no way someone depending on a booklet or something could produce it in an office. It's particularly tough when the office machines are mostly dead anyway.

I went to the copy center to investigate. Evidently, both machines dropped dead last week. I'm amazed I only heard about it yesterday. The woman in the office told me we no longer had our machines serviced by Xerox, which was evidently very good. Instead, there's some company I never heard of that the city has contracted to do all the machines. They took a week to get to us.

The guy from the company I never heard of fixed both machines, but the stapler in one doesn't work. So evidently they're processing only single pages in that machine. I'm surprised anyone even brings single pages to the copying center, and maybe they don't. If it were me, I'd just run everything and tell teachers to staple it themselves. I'd much rather have stuff to staple than nothing to work with.

But hey, I'm just a lowly teacher. What do I know about copying machines? I did find someone to do copies for me, but people here and there are inclined to do me favors. I know it's not fair, but I don't know what I'd do today without them.
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