Some Studies in Ink & Paper

On the way to one’s Master’s degree there are many minor obstacles. Some of them are supposedly easy to deal with (getting books from a closed library, doing research on the Internet when the connection has failed, overcoming one’s terrible headaches and pretending that one can actually read from the monitor for hours, knowing when and where to find your teachers when their consultation hours seem to be a TOP SECRET matter), but some of them seem just unsolvable - for example when your printer goes on strike.

During the academic year I usually use our “ingenious“ copy-print system at school, which includes an ISIC card, a reasonable amount of cash, a huge amount of patience and a bit of engineering skills for handling the giant machines. In really desperate cases (when there are endless queues or “temporarily” irreparable errors) I use (and pay for) the printer at work, or run to some copy centre. My (ex?) roommate got an old printer from her father last year, so I was looking forward to the comfort of having the chance to print in our dormitory room even during weekends or holidays. But soon after our buying a set of papers we discovered that the printer is only compatible with my roommate’s laptop, which she was naturally taking with her for holidays. Lonely weekends with my “beloved” computer were not crucial for my studies, after all.

But when I am spending part of my summer holidays/exam period at home, I am dependent on a “family” printer, which is quite old from my point of view and quite new from my parents’ point of view. In any case, cooperation with it is adventurous and time and patience-demanding: You put a sheet of paper in it, a lot of noise and earth-, sorry, tablequakes follows, and the result is as unpredictable as when making a tie-dye T-shirt. The final surprise is not always pleasant and MY finding out that MY SISTER someone else has used all the toner just happens way too often.

First time when this had happened, my father wanted to be helpful and ecological. He secretly sent my grandma to buy a refill in the downtown and used one of the syringes, which my mother usually uses for his treatment, to refill the toner. The result of this noble experiment was my father being home alone, balancing on a chair, trying to cover up the black marks all over the ceiling with a white paint, hoping that my mother wouldn’t notice.
A series of painful “I-am-not-rich-enough-to-buy-cheap-things“ experiences followed and finally my father discovered a company, which was selling the compatible kind of toners. This company has been living in a fragile symbiosis with our printer until this June.
Just at the time when I (who else) found out that we have run out of toner again and indicated carefully that I would REALLY need to print out some of my drafts, essays, or at least the agreement for the accommodation office, the company found out that it was inconvenient to distribute this kind of toner anymore, as „nobody“ would buy it. (Proof that our printer might be getting old still not strong enough.)
Then I gave up and went to France. But my father never gives up. He looked up a company on the Internet, which was “compliant” to send him “our” kind of toner. When I came back, it was bought already and the ceremony of “changing of the toners” began. And continued by many hours of hopeless printer reinstalling and watching the blank pages coming out of it again and again in disbelief.

So, a few minutes ago my father started to write a very, eh, assertive reclamation letter to this “serviceable“ company. Then my mother entered the room: “Don’t you tell me that you are sending them a HANDWRITTEN complaint?“

"Of course I am,"my father replied. "So that they would see that I was given no choice!"

I wonder, whether this would work with my teachers...

Hooray for manuscripts!