I am a report-creating MACHINE
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Part of my job is preparing reports of analytical results for nearly all the clients of this laboratory. A good bit of this process is automated, but the emailing/faxing/mailing portion of it is a series of manual steps.
I have it down to a science. A specific series of mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts to generate the report, save it as a PDF, print the second copy we keep in our files. Then other series of clicks/shortcuts to prepare an email, a fax, or a printed cover sheet for mailed reports.
That's when the high-speed printer decides to misfeed the letterhead, and in about a tenth of a second five sheets are shredded and the interior of the printer is coated with fine paper dust that gums up its entire workings.
Day screeches to halt.