Cubicle Chronicles - The Office Printer And Maybe The Lowest Moment In Cube Monkey History
KFC,
Dude I don’t even know where to begin. Below is a fucking poem that a guy at my work wrote and sent out to the ENTIRE company. It’s about our plotter (large copier) that went out and we have to get a new one on our floor. He’s completely ruined my weekend and possibly my entire adult life now.
Cody
“At least scroll down to the last two lines, if you don’t read the whole poem.
Ode on an Oce Plotter Jan Keets
Thou quite ravish’d bride of blackprint,
Thou foster-child of breakage and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus offend
A flowery project more sweetly than our rhyme:
What angst-fring’d architect haunts about thy delays
Of paper or toner, or of both,
In David Q. or David of Lindly?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to plot?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Met schedules are sweet, but those exceeded
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual client, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit PLs of no tone:
Fair plotter, beneath the paper, thou canst not leave
Thy plotting, nor ever can those transmittals be bare;
Bold engineer, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the budget yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou stress, and she be late!
Ah, happy, happy clients! that cannot shed
Your issue dates, nor ever bid the project low;
And, happy CAD jockey, bleary eyed,
For ever piping pipes for ever changing;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever changing, and for ever chang’d;
All breathing human schedules remain,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the whine?
To what paper altar, O mysterious EM,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her printed flanks with notes drest?
What little building by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this quirk, this piteous scorn?
And, little plotter, thy rolls for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art silent, can ne’er operate.
O bulky shape! Tempestuous attitude! with brede
Of strest-out men and maidens overwrought,
With client reps and the CAD operators;
Thou, bombastic form, dost tease us out of work
As doth delay: Wait evermore!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a bane to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Broke is Oce, Oce broke,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Sometimes, there’s just no words. There’s no words left to describe the misery of Cube Life when you see something like this. Previously I thought the chick dressing up as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was the lowest moment in Cube Monkey life. But like a 500 word Olde English pem dedicated to a printer might take the cake. That might be it. I mean over the years of Cubicle Chronicles I’ve written about the One Liner Douchebag, the Outdated Pop Culture Reference Guy. The “See You Next Year!” Guy and the April Fools Jerkoffs. I’ve tried to capture how soul crushing and bleak life can be when you have to deal with all of these kind of people for 50 something hours a week. But I honestly dont know if I can even comprehend how bad things are for Cody. I dont think I can understand just how miserable it would have to be to make small talk and fake laugh with an asshole of this caliber. Someone needs to kick this guy’s ass for the betterment of mankind. You just cant let this sort of unfunniness go unchecked. I’d flat out fire this guy if I was on that email.
And the sickest part is the love he has for the printer. Anyone who’s ever been trapped in a Monkey Cage knows that office printers are the source of more rage and misery than maybe anything at work. When I was at Deloitte they named all the printers after Renaissance artists. So you would choose to print stuff to Raphael or Michaelangelo or Da Vinci. Some stupid nonsense like that. None of them ever worked and I just knew there was some asshole out there who came up with those names that was so proud of himself. Man, fuck those printers.