Oh the allure of the copy machine. While all of you can easily walk into any of your neighborhood photo copy joints, Kinkos, Dollar Bill, Office Depot and make copies by the thousands if you want to, I, my friends, have no such luxury.
In Honduras, the copy machine is akin to a rocket ship or a highly complicated brain surgery. Only the experts are allowed to touch, use, and make copies. By the way they treat the copy machine, especially at my school, you'd think that Miss Secretaria Berta had to go to special photocopy school and obtain a government certified license before being allowed to make copies.
I really don't understand. Like, I just. don't. understand. For one thing, if I want something copied for that day, there is a fat chance I am going to get it. The other morning I asked Miss Julie if I could have 16 copies made for that afternoon. We're talking a minimum of 3 hours later. Now, I understand that I probably shouldn't ask people do make copies the day I want to use them. (God forbid I come up with something I want to hand out the next day in class.) Julie was like, "today?" and I said, "yeah" and she said, simply, "oooh..no, I don't think so." Ohhh my...16 copies? 3 hours? Oye gosh...I know I'm asking a lot. Considering it probably takes a total of 1 minute to make this happen. But, I just said, "okay, I'll just use the handout tomorrow" and went on my merry way. And by merry way, I mean walked into the teacher's lounge and complained to Abby.
The other thing is though that some days, Miss Berta isn't here. For example, she was out for a week when her mother was sick. You would think, just think, maybe just a glimmer of thinking, that perhaps, someone else would take our tests that needed to be photocopied and um...photocopy them? Well, when I went to get my test copies that week, as in I had a test that day that students had studied for, there were no copies to be had. Right. Cause that makes perfect sense. I asked Julie what was up and she was like, "Well Miss Berta isn't here...soooo...." Soooo...what? I don't give my test? You can make the copies? Is Miss Berta the only one who knows how to use the copy machine? Come to find out, yes, as a matter of fact she is. Now, I don't know where this idea that the copy machine is a total enigma came from, but it is certainly there, with everyone at that school. So then I asked Julie, "Can I maybe try and make copies?" She looked at me with such surprise and shock, "You...you...you think you can do it?" Hmm...well, in short, "Yes." It was as if I told her I could solve a rubix cube in 2 minutes flat.
Honduras, I tell ya. It's a hoot.
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2 comments:
Ha ha. At my work there's a lot of things only one person knows how to do - and we all wait with our fingers up our noses, when that person is gone. Like scheduling a meeting room for example. Or ordering an office supply. But we're all pretty expert at the copy machine.
There's a lot of stuff I'm the only one knows how to do too, heh, heh, heh. And there's a bunch of passwords only I and my trusted interns know. Now that's power!
I bet when the lady came back from vacation she like touched the machine and was like "Someone's been here...someone's made a copy...WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" and then like smelled the machine and came to your house to find you (a la evil principal in Matilda)
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