These Copies Are Coming Out Blue

(It’s just another day working at a print shop when a customer using a self-service copier looks alarmed.)

Customer: “What the heck?!”

Me: *approaching the customer* “Is there something I can do to help?”

Customer: “Your copier is cursing at me!”

Me: *takes a second to process this unusual statement* “I’m sorry? How is it cursing at you?”

(I started to look at the copier’s display, wondering if there was an error she might have been misconstruing as cursing, when she showed me the copy she’d just made. It was a bunch of receipts, but in between each receipt, there were curse words and other letters randomly spread around. I looked at the copier and where she’d placed them on the scanner bed and saw nothing. Suddenly, I remembered that the previous customer to use this machine had been making cut-and-paste handbills that were rather “rude,” and I looked at the underside of the copier’s lid. Because the customer had placed their original pasted copy on the scanner bed before it had completely dried, parts of it had stuck to the lid and ninja’d their way onto this customer’s copies. Luckily, once I discovered the issue and moved her to a new copier, we both had a good laugh about the rowdy and uncouth copier while I cleaned it up.)