When you are accidentally funny, you do not complain

Or, at least I don't. I view it as a stroke of luck, if not actual genius.

The context: my current calling (job, unpaid-- most active Mormons have 'em) at church-- well, one of them-- is to first assemble, and then copy off the paper program each week. The other week, however, I was sick; below is the only-slightly-edited email that I sent out. After two different people told me, unprompted, how funny they thought the email was, I realized I should just go with the flow and recognize the gift of an already-written blog post when I see one.

... I am sick, so someone else will need to copy [the program] off. Don't you feel lucky that we got it done early this week?

To whomever copies it off, this is how I outsmarted the copy machine last week: I used the regular tray instead of the bypass tray for the 8 1/2 x 14 paper.

And now for the rest of the instructions:

First: I am sick and tired and not editing as I normally would, so seriously, read everything because I may have hidden some important detail in the middle of an unimportant paragraph. Also, my deepest apologies.

You can either get the paper from the shelf highest, to the left, and closest to the window (as you are facing the window); or, you can just get some more from the clerks' office (under the counter that faces you as you walk in).

You access the regular tray by, as you are facing the copier, reaching down to the lowest tray and pulling it out. It should have at least some 8 1/2 x 11 paper in it; take that out, then adjust the paper-holder-thingy (you have to push the tab on one side while sliding it in the other direction; slightly complicated, but you'll get the hang of it) until it is ALL the way out, and it should be ready to accept the 8 1/2 x 14 paper. After you push the tray back, the copier will give you a pop-up window that will say something like, "Wait... did you just put 8 1/2 x 14 paper in my tray 1?" and you will say "Confirm," and hopefully you will be good to go. When you are done, of course, you will need to reverse this process.

I normally make about 85 copies. I also normally make at least one copy first to make sure that it isn't doing anything funky. If it starts doing funky stuff after the 85 copies have started, you 1) yell at the copy machine (HIGHLY effective, I assure you), then 2) push the red "stop" button, to the right of the main screen and 3) look at the three buttons on the left side of the main screen; the middle one should be lableled "job status;" if you push that, then select your job, then say "delete," that should finally make it stop.

Our copier is also highly enthusiastic once it gets going, so you will want to pull out the thingy that prevents every third copy from [going] spat on to the floor. There's a little hole you can see, on the end of the place where the copies come out (sorry about all this technical jargon), and if you stick your finger in it and pull, the thingy should come out and pop up so that you don't have to mess with babysitting the copier while the copies come out.

Don't forget to trade the paper out again. Besides the fact that forgetting to trade the paper out will waste perfectly good legal-sized paper, other folks making copies will probably be interested in having their copies coming out normal-sized. So don't forget.

Clear as mud? Excellent. If you get stuck, you can ask [Ward Clerk] (what I usually do); or, if you really want, you can call me ([555-555-5555]). I warn you, though, that my definite plan at this point is to still be sleeping off The Cold Of Death, so I may be a little groggy. No guilt, though.

Also, you could just go to Staples. It should cost under $20 if you do the copies yourself, and you can print out from the internet there (I think...), and there will be a helpful employee there in case you get stuck. Just bring the receipt to the clerks' office and you can get reimbursed.

Afternote: now that I re-read this, I can see that there really are funny bits. I think that what happened was that I was feeling terrible about having to pawn this whole process off on someone who had not done battle with the copier before (I'd lost a 20-minute fight with it sometime in the three weeks before this email got sent) and so I was trying to lighten the load with a little humor. Either that, or writing about a non-cooperative copier just brings out my funny side. You pick.