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Vid Of all the devices making our working lives harder, printers take top billing. Never mind computers that crash mid-PowerPoint or smartphones that inexplicably can’t find the network – these, at least, are complicated, multi-function devices with a lot going on.
But printers? These have one job and one job only: put ink on paper. A new video sees punters getting their own back on the dumb machines.
Anyone who's tried to fix a broken printer knows frustration: you get pixelated error messages crammed into tiny screens that are meaningless to anybody outside Xerox labs or that are just plain wrong. To quote Samir in the 1999 classic Office Space: “Paper jam? But there is no paper jam!"
Best move along, pretend you never saw it, find a different printer in the office, leave it to the next schmuck – which is why a downed printer becomes the leper nobody goes near and never gets fixed. That is until somebody in management steps up, with their big fix: punch some buttons, or hit the on/off button. Well, it works for computers, doesn’t it?
Now, paper-printer-and-office-supplies pusher Bytes Document Solutions has released a film – as part of a new ad campaign – that taps into the primal urge of the suffering commuting classes to maim the machines that defy us.
Possibly inspired by Office Space, Bytes has drawn on six white-coat-clad, sledgehammer-happy volunteers to destroy a gang of printers in a short film called I hate printers (part one). It mixes slow-mo swings with inspiring classical in a wrecking yard backdrop to deliver a Reservoir Dogs-meets-Platoon blend of the brutal meets the divine.
Bytes had to fight off people ready to swing the steel, and that's probably why it has two more films coming. “In the end we had eight times more people than we needed, so we drew straws to see who would feature in the film,” managing director Darren Spence said in a press release.
If you’ve never seen the Office Space machine takedown to Geto Boys' Damn it feels good to be a gangsta, you've missed out. Go here. For a pop-culture mash inspired by Office Space and that draws on the hits of YouTube, check out Mistabishi's Printer Jam vs Office Space here.
It beats paying a therapist. ®
COMMENTS
their collectively lousy sledge-hammer technique leaves a lot to be desired ...
After killing five printers they will level up and can increase their hammer/axe skills so they miss less, plus they'll get a 2% chance of scoring a critical hit.
And I thought it was just me with the irrational loathing of printers!
When my last printer's terminal fuckwittedness finally earned it the death penalty, I poured methylated spirits into its insides and set it alight, before sending through a valedictory print job.
Ironically, this seemed to help and the wee bastard did actually start printing more immediately and with more enthusiasm than usual —for a few minutes anyway— before grinding to a halt with an almost animal sounding squeak from its smoking nether regions.
The printer before that got run over by my van several times, when its 'signal to pissing me off' ratio got too much.
It's the only language they understand!
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