#33: Printers--another reason why technology and I don't get along

So, currently I am working as a secretary on-campus in the HR department. The printer we use is connected with 6 computers located within the office, so the sound of printing has practically become white noise to me. It makes it exciting when you're trying to print

Well, I needed to print something off of the database, which contains a lot of confidential information about the people that come to us. I just needed to print off this one page, so I went to menu-->print--->print, like anyone would do. Well, when I hit "print" the little hourglass icon popped up along with a box that said: printing: 1..2..3..10...25...50... pages. I realized that the printer wasn't going to just print the one page, but the WHOLE database, and with every half-second the number kept getting higher... 100....156....189....256...310...."Stop! Stop! STOOOPPP!!!! AAaAAaaAAAaAaAAAHHH!!!!"

I freaked out and by the time we cancelled it and I exited out of the database the number had reach 500-something. Fortunately no pages had actually printed. Phew.

Then, a few minutes later, someone inside their office started printing a document, or so it seemed. I continued working and by second nature ignored the sound of the printing. I hardly even noticed that several minutes later the printer was still spewing out pages. Then my co-worker went by, looked at it and realized,"It's the database!!!!!"

She canceled it, and sure enough, there was a huge stack of freshly printed pages directly from my computer. I sighed, knowing that it's destination would be straight to one of the huge paper shredders we had. I felt terrible that I had just wasted so much paper, and had probably annihilated the equivalent of a small tree, and then my other co-worker suggested that maybe it would end up as some gerbil's bedding.

Sigh. I'm glad I could contribute to the Bedless Gerbil Cause. Stupid printer.