The photocopier is amongst the most mind numbingly pragmatic and banal devices ever invented in the history of office based technology. Upon inserting a banal item of bureaucratic detritus and pressing the relevant keys, one is left with two items of bureaucratic detritus and a slight increase in the level of one's self hatred/murderous rage. The photocopier is a device which, given the opportunity and the timely intervention of a sufficiently twatish and merciless superior, will devour your time and convert it into an ever expanding pile of irrelevant garbage (working under the assumption that the vast majority of offices in this world deal with documents that are of very little interest even to the people who deal with them).
But every so often, something magical happens. Every so often, between one set of tiresome invoices and the next, a soft, plump, joyful pair of buttocks graces the indignant glass face of our most hated office chum. A flash of light and an irksome, mechanical groan later, and this wondrous event is recorded forever, thereafter a part of our history as a species! From time to time, it happens with boobs as well. Verily, the urge to photocopy one's unmentionables is strong, but what is it that makes this activity so compelling? (Apart from the fact that any activity that has a greater than 7% chance of including boobage must automatically be graded as "awesome").
Perhaps the key to the matter is subversion; the desire to undermine and disregard the systems that stamp themselves over who we are. Fully one third of a full time office worker's waking life is given over to "the company", organised and structured according to the company's needs, their dress, their hair, their manner of speech all regulated and stifled by the needs and goals of the company. Everything in the office environment reminds the worker of the grim functionality or his situation (save for the trivial "personal touches" allowed by management, e.g. a kitten themed calendar or a mug declaring oneself "BEST DAD EVER"). The hole-punch punches holes, the ring binder receives that which is punched, the stapler staples, the franking machine "franks" away merrily until we're all dead. But the photocopier...now that's a different beast. The distinction is that the photocopier is meant to do a particular thing, but could potentially do things that it's not meant to do! It's subvertable! It's a chink in the armour, one of perhaps only two or three. This could well be the explanation for that unshakeable urge: that the photocopier represents one of the only opportunities we have for semi-genuine self expression in an environment hostile to it. The hole-punch will punch holes and the stapler will make staples, but the photocopier grants us a choice if we only have sufficient cunning! Be gone foul invoices! Let mine own rump be the subject matter! Let my hearty bosom be the business of the day! In this moment, let me be the boss!
There's a lesson here. The human spirit demands expression, it demands subversion, and if that has to involve naughty-bits, so be it.
Author Resource:
Jennifer Robinson writes for Online Connect UK together with Kasim Aka. Online Connect are a specialist retailer of copier and office equipment. Visit them online to find Cheap copiers
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