When it comes to printers, our thoughts can be unprintable | Memmott

It’s Printer Week at the Washington Post, and I’m online watching a video that shows angry men in hard hats swinging away in smash rooms, smashing printers.

They’re getting out their rage, though the Post makes clear it’s best to leave printers alone. Given the machine’s chemical contents, breaking them up can be dangerous, both to humans and the planet.

As I watch the carnage, a message pops up on my screen. It tells me that my HP Envy Photo 7100 series printer is low on ink.

“Order Now – fast and easy!” it says.

So it is that I’m watching printers being destroyed as my printer is crying out for ink.

My printer is a full-service nag. Hooked into our Wi-Fi, it just won’t shut up.

I’m playing Wordle or doing a crossword, essential activities.

HP Envy butts in, tells me how it’s doing, what it needs. Again, and again, and again.

The nagging is a prelude to the paper jam that can accompany my efforts to print something.

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I lift up the cover, stare at the inside, pull the crushed paper out. Not all of the crushed paper, of course. About half rips off, stays where it wants to stay. I cry, say unprintable words. It isn’t pretty.

I am not alone.

“(Printers are) the shark in your sea of gadgets,” the Post reports. “No other device inspires more fear and loathing that the printer.”

And the loathing has been going on for a long time.

I did a search for “Why do we hate printers?”

It triggered 88,500,000 responses. One, from The Oatmeal, is titled, “Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell to Make Us Miserable.”

That story is undated, but I find a bunch of stories from eight years ago, all of them expressing a loathing for printers.

I suspect I could go way back and find out that even Gutenberg hated printers.

Were he still around, Gutenberg might show up in one of those smash rooms to destroy his own creation. Serves it right.

Central to printer hate is a belief that, after all these years, printers should work better. Cars are better. Phones are better. Why aren’t printers better?

To be fair, they are a little better. They can print wirelessly (if you can master the setup). Color is better than it used to be.

So, given that it’s Printer Week, in the spirit of reconciliation, I’m going to cut HP Envy some slack, thank it for the jobs it has completed, forgive it for the ones it has refused to complete.

I’ll satisfy Envy’s thirst, as well, and take out a loan, order some ink. I think that will cheer it up, make it feel better, maybe even stop the nagging.

Perhaps all of you should follow my lead. Put down your sledgehammers. Take off your hard hats. Make peace with your printers. Copy that.

Remarkable Rochester: Samuel Mora

Tom Lavin of Irondequoit suggested that I check out the fascinating life of Samuel Mora, a high-ranking Eastman Co. executive who went on to start his own car company. That didn’t work out in the long run, but, for his efforts, let’s add Mora’s name to the list of Remarkable Rochesterians.

Samuel Mora (1864-1918): The Mora Motor Car Company that he founded in 1906 in Newark, Wayne County, turned out perhaps 1,000 well-received cars during five model years. A native of Missouri, he had risen to be general director of sales for the Eastman Kodak Co. before he was fired by George Eastman, reportedly because he was acting as if he would to succeed Eastman as the company’s leader. After the Mora Car company folded in 1911, he moved to Cleveland, where his effort at starting a truck company was unsuccessful.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454

For more information

For more on Washington Post's Printer Week, go to https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/10/rage-room-printers-recycle-environment-health/

To find the article, Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell to make us miserable, go to https://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

To search the list of Remarkable Rochesterians, go to https://data.democratandchronicle.com/remarkable-rochesterians/

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: When it comes to printers, our thoughts can be unprintable