Print: Fail. Humour: Fail.

I despair sometimes. I really do.

We have a shared printer at our office. It's a big one that takes a miraculous array of paper sizes and prints in glorious technicolour. Having said that, it uses four-colour toner cartridges that cost the same as the Bolivian National Debt, whilst emitting a strange warm aroma that can't be too healthy for anyone sitting within a 10 metre radius.

As a shared printer, it gets all sorts of print jobs thrown at it. Brochure proofs, Powerpoint handouts, shiny graphical things. You name it, the printer will churn it out, under a haze of carcinogens. One colleague insists on printing their monochrome text documents on it too. That's a bit like getting Michelangelo to paint your kitchen.

I sense the printer is not happy with this latter colleague.

I can tell this because the printer breaks down with alarming regularity. We used to have a small, gnomic man come round pretty much every day, to tinker and tut. Last summer he had to go back to his mountain hall, and since then we've been stuck with trying to decipher the service messages on the little LCD screen.

Such an instance occurred last week. A colleague was standing by the printer, a look of abject despair painted on her face. "It's done it again," she sighed.

"What's the screen say?" I asked, in best Boy Scout mode.
She peered at the grey characters: "Jam in print tray."
"Well, there's your problem, right away," I opined. "Who's gone and put jam in the sodding printer? Honestly, if people can't get through the day without introducing fruit conserve to our office equipment, there is very little hope for us as a species."

She paused. And sighed again. And rolled her eyes.

"No. I think it's a paper jam." She pronounced the italics.

I ask you. Pearls before swine.