Work Text:
“Aw, come on Jonny, be good to the nice accountants?” Tomaz cajoled, or attempted to cajole, the old cantankerous J-0N Matrix printer to behave.
The printer whirled and rolled, the clicking noise a clear negative.
Behind him, the office manager who had called for maintenance shifted nervously. “I don't think–”
“Hush,” Tomaz interrupted, waving a hand. “You might want to take a step back, too. They really can smell fear, you know.”
The printer huffed, as much as a printer of its type could; clearly it did not appreciate the comment.
But this was Tomaz's speciality; printers with attitude.
J-0N 1-AB-24324-HNKNG was recalcitrant, temperamental, and prone to snapping at people who tried to clear its paper jams. An older printer, it was not quite as advanced, quite as personable as some that Tomaz worked with, with no easy way to communicate verbally beyond set error messages when something kept it from printing.
Right now, the orange lights blinked PRINTER ON FIRE in short and long bursts. Tomaz had picked up enough Morse code on the job to know he was being told to fuck off in a more colorful manner you’d expect from office machinery, if you weren’t in IT.
(He may or may not have made note of what the printer said about his mother and a steam cleaner; you never knew when you had to start a fight with everyone in earshot.)
“Look, you weren’t this upset last week when the power outage caused all that trouble, or two months ago when that subpar paper jammed you up like–no don’t bite, I don’t need a reminder. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
And maybe Tomaz was known as the printer whisperer for a reason, because after another ten minutes of cajoling, the ornery old thing admitted to the cause; if a printer could blush, it would have. There was definitely grumbling in the noises it made before it finally let the prints flow again. At least, provisionally.
The office manager boggled. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
Tomaz shrugged. “He lost in chess to the printer up in legal.”
“But that printer is not even networked!”
Tomaz grimaced. “Yeah, about that. You know the dots they use for identification?”
“...Yes?”
“That’s how they’ve been playing.”
The office manager also contributed a few memorable words at that point.
**
The dot matrix issue would be someone else’s problem, well above his pay grade. Tomaz himself headed three floors down to market research in search of a printer that had been deemed “sulky and uncooperative” when it came to putting in a new ream of paper.
It took him about three minutes to figure out the reason, and another ten to get the manager to believe him.
Tomaz sighed. “The printer misses ‘the pretty lady’ who used to change its ink and paper.”
“Melody Lee? But she’s on maternity leave for another six months!”
“Well, do you think she’d like to come visit, stave off the sibling rivalry?”
”.. I’ll give her a call.”
Tomaz kept his fingers crossed all the way back to the desk where the recalcitrant printer was beeping forlornly. This was going to be fun to explain to a young printer who had no concept of biological reproduction, or vacation time for the matter.
Good thing this wasn’t his first rodeo.
**
The thing about printers, you had to keep in mind, was that while they definitely were people, they weren’t human, or, people people, like Rhonda was fond of saying.
A human in the office throwing a shitfit because a specific coworker was no longer there? HR nightmare. A printer with mommy issues doing the same? Nothing out of the ordinary.
As far as Tomaz was concerned, trying to get the multifunction device in marketing someone had allowed to get caffeinated to calm the fuck down before it damaged itself in its excitement had been far more challenging. Poor Foxtrot had been so embarrassed once he got it to slow down and stop trying to print on empty.
He kind of hated the part of the job where he had to change parts when they were damaged; it felt a little too much like trauma surgery or some shit like that, if he was entirely honest with himself. He knew they couldn’t feel it the same way a human or an animal–or even a plant or a mushroom–would, but he was still there, elbow deep in their guts fiddling with their bits.
A steaming cup of tea was waiting on his desk; it was the first thing he noticed when he stepped foot into the closet that was the office IT room.
“Thanks, Rhonda,” he said in lieu of a greeting to his partner.
“Don’t thank me, thank Mo,” Rhonda shrugged from where she was untangling what looked like a rat king made of ergonomic mice, the cables weaving happily as they got undone. “He let me know you were having a time.”
Tomaz grinned. Of course. MOD-01123, Mo, sitting on his desk whirred briefly. The old inkjet was technically not network capable but Tomaz had jerry-rigged a few bits and bobs to make it so the old clunker wouldn't get lonely in the dank depths of maintenance hallways where few people dared to tread outside support hours.
(Night shift didn't count. Night shift weren't people.)
“Thanks, Mo.” He reached out to rub a finger across the bit right above the paper intake that was the first spot dust started to gather. It was like scratching a dog behind the ears; Mo whirred happily and blinked his lights in a quick UR WLCM.
With a cup of tea and a happily whirring printer, Tomaz began the arduous process of documenting the work he'd done upstairs.
Name of printer: J-0N 1-AB-24324-HNKNG
Issue: Printer refusing to co-operate and acting hostile, error display printer on fire.
Investigation:
Visual inspection showed no injury to the printer.
Confirmed displayed message incorrect; printer not on fire
Spoke with printer and ascertained issue was emotional in nature
Printer was unhappy because it lost a game against J-0N 1-AC-35222-SNGPR located in Legal.
Resolution:
No hardware or software changes required.
Jonny has agreed to start working again “until he gets a rematch”. As a game played via tracking dots takes months, this means the issue of printer unavailability has been resolved until further notice.
However, considering the fact that the tracking dots are meant to be stationary and identifiable to the printer and not moved, escalating to systems and security architecture to figure out what to do about the tracking dots being compromised for the printers’ entertainment purposes.
Tomaz hit send and took another sip of his tea. It would take him perhaps half an hour to finish documenting the rest of his cases, and then he'd be free to tinker with Mo's new bluetooth speakers until it was time to go home.
Just another day in the office.
***
“Mo… what do you mean, you are on the top of the inter office chess rankings?”