Printers are pure evil

‘Printers are evil,’ said the office supplies salesman after I texted him to complain that my new printer was not working.

A day earlier he had installed it perfectly, and it worked perfectly – all the while he was standing there. Then he left, and the devilish thing looked at me and thought: ‘I’ll have some fun with her.’

The problem could be anything. The printer doesn’t care. All it wants to do is not work

I don’t really understand why we can put men and women in space, but we can’t make printers work unless a tech expert is standing by.

Elon Musk says he is going to Mars, and I believe him. I have his Starlink wifi and it’s brilliant. What I don’t understand is why Elon, who can do everything, can’t help make printers work.

Obviously the new world is not focused on us printing stuff, but the reality is, even if you switch over to everything being digital, you can bet your bottom bitcoin that a couple of times a year someone will ask you to either scan something that your phone won’t scan well enough, or sign a document that you cannot sign digitally, no matter what software you download.

At that point, you have to get your blasted printer working. And let’s face it, you can’t. No one can.

You locate it – in the corner of a room in your house somewhere, or in a box in the attic – and you dust it off. You plug it in, it comes to life, you send it something and it either doesn’t reconnect to the wifi or it won’t talk to your computer for some or other baffling reason.

It could be anything. The printer doesn’t care. All it wants to do is not work. When you start investigating, the problem turns out to be something that would defeat Nasa – and possibly even Elon.