Had a printer jam 5 minutes before a deadline and almost lost it

I was at my kitchen table last Friday with a design due at noon and my old HP printer started making that grinding noise right when I hit print. It was a logo package for a brewery in Portland and they needed physical proofs mailed by 3pm. I tried clearing the jam but a tiny piece of paper ripped off inside and I couldn't reach it. So I grabbed my laptop and drove to the FedEx Office near the highway and used their self serve printer for $8. Got the proofs out by 11:30 and made the FedEx drop off with 20 minutes to spare. Has anyone else had a piece of equipment totally fail at the worst possible moment? What do you do as a backup plan?

3 comments

3 Comments

xenam8422d ago

Not me but my friend Sarah had her ancient MacBook die mid-render for a wedding video. She was at a coffee shop with no charger backup, battery at 8%. She just sat there frozen for a solid 30 seconds. Ended up texting the bride from the bathroom to ask if she could email the raw files instead and stalled with "editing the final touches." Bride was cool about it somehow. Printer jams are the devil though, I swear they know when you're stressed.

wells.evan22d ago

It's wild how technology always seems to pick the worst possible moment to fail, like it senses when you're already on edge. Printers especially have this sixth sense for stress, jamming only when you're already running late with zero time to spare. Really makes you wonder if machines have some kind of built-in vendetta against their users or if it's just bad luck piling on.

gibson.troy21d ago

Printers are basically divas that wait until you're in a time crunch to throw a temper tantrum. That little piece of paper that rips off inside is their favorite trick, they save that one for the real emergencies. FedEx Office has saved my butt more times than I care to count, it's basically my backup printer at this point. The real question is why we keep buying these machines that clearly hate us and want us to fail. Maybe the solution is to just have a good relationship with your local print shop and call it a day.