If you did not know, The Fallon Post and Fallon Magazine are printed in-house right in our local shop. We have a printer that is about a million feet long and temperamental as all get-out. She is a spendy, high-tech piece of printing ingenuity that allows us to design the paper's layout and print the paper every week right here in Fallon. Our printer has been, mainly because of her size, lovingly named Becky after the ‘90s song “Baby Got Back.” (Viviane, that’s on our playlist, yes?)
Becky and I have a pretty tumultuous relationship, quite honestly. A paper jam can turn into a dangerous and mind-melting struggle for power.
Like last week, for example. You see, we had what we thought was a mild, regular paper jam, however, as we worked through all 900 different jam areas to release the papers that had gotten caught, we realized it was something more serious. Eventually, we soothed the old girl and got her sections cleaned out, but then the first print section drawer would not close.
Did I mention this is a spendy piece of equipment?
We were actually on pace to make it to the Post Office on schedule but none of us could get that one drawer to close. I crawled under and above and behind, finding a mechanism that, for some, still unknown reason would not correctly line up and release the M1 handle. We pushed the mechanism, trying to trick it into going -- nothing.
In her work attire, Leanna wound up flat on her back, lying under this drawer of death trying to establish what the best course of action would be when tragedy struck. She tripped the mechanism and asked Jo to turn the handle. When Jo turned, Leanna failed to move her pointer finger in time and had it pinned tight between the mechanism and metal lever arm and upon instinct ripped her finger free, leaving her laying on the floor cursing like a, well, a journalist.
I finally had enough of this nonsense, so I proceeded to do what anyone handling a piece of work machinery in a farm town would do -- I slammed the drawer closed with the brute force of my forefathers. And IT WORKED.
About that time, the technician who has not yet been trained in Becky's nuances arrived, possessing no idea how to fix this issue in the future. He did however, show us how to slam correctly – more journalistically as opposed to farm hand slamming.
Finally back to printing, but missing the post office deadline, we all had lost any semblance of humor. The paper settings are crucial, and we must calibrate for each different type of paper we use for the various jobs we do; somehow during door slamming instructions, the newspaper setting had gotten deleted.
Leanna and I attempted to muster all our will to survive and fix this, but we couldn’t do it.
Rachel arrived and showed Leanna how to reset the newspaper drawer, and which point Leanna promptly ran for her life.
Warily and emotionally on edge, I was in time to catch Becky in a new jam with a code we have never seen before. “Toner Waste Full” bringing me back to opening every cursed drawer again on the hunt for anything that looked like a toner waste receptacle. I found it. The instructions said to seal it and replace it with a new one. But we didn’t have a replacement. Neither did our copy guys and it was after 5pm.
Luckily our technician took pity on us, coming back to the office, where he manually emptied the toner waste cartridge by pouring the fine, pink waste dust into a trash can while trying not to inhale the pink-powder dust cloud. He proudly walked back into the office with a lovely new shade of very pink toner dust covering him head to toe, and successfully replaced the now empty waste toner receptacle.
Optimism returned with us all thinking we may print the store deliveries and get them all out on time. But no, Becky then ran out of black toner.
With no other options at that time of day, we had to shut ‘er down for the night and pray tomorrow would be better. The Fallon Post is brought to you all with our blood, sweat, and tears, and we love every second of it. Thank you for all your support. Without you, I would have just shot Becky and called it good.
The Feral Housewife
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