Dear Canon Printer, I miss you
Beloved Canon Printer 5750,
Readers of this blog will be surprised to read a genuinely nice email to a computer company. I am writing to you because you were the best printer I ever had, and I miss you so much.
You were always perfect. You never gave me any trouble until the very end when it was all my mistake anyway.
Paper always fed into you just fine. You were perfect. My new printer’s paper loader doesn’t know when to stop. I can push it in too far or not far enough, and I have no way of knowing. No way of knowing until a new message gets flashed across my screen with a big red X telling me to check the paper.
This does not happen just once in a while, but every time.
I wish I had bought another Canon printer, but I was going for the cheapest at the time.
This week I was in a hurry to print off the proposal for funding the musical. I had a time deadline, you understand. Two hours until the post office closes at 11:15 on Saturdays in Fairfield, Iowa.
Beloved Canon 5750, your ink cartridges used to last a long time. Not so this new printer’s cartridges.
Right in the middle of printing these important documents, the ink cartridge for my new printer ran out without prior notice. Ten blurry pages got printed before the skull and crossbones went up on the screen with a sweety-sweet message: “Your ink cartridge is running low. You may want to have an extra one on hand.” It also told me where I could order them on line. Why didn’t it tell me this before the cartridge ran out.
The pity of it is, Dear Canon, that I do have an extra cartridge SOMEWHERE, but I couldn’t find it.
Okay, you realize I was in a hurry. I ran down to Radio Shack. They don’t open until 11:30 a.m., can you believe?
I ran over to Walmart. There was no one in electronics to help me. There were dozens of cartridges for the new brand printer I have now whose name I am too polite to mention. Finally I thought to go over to the jewelry counter, and the nice lady there called for assistance for me.
After five minutes someone with a badge strolled over. She asked me if I needed help. I asked her if she knew about this electronic section. She said the person who did was taking over for her while she was on her break. “But it is easy,” she said, ” to find the number cartridge you need. See, it’s right here in the book.”
It took her only five long minutes to identify the right one. It was 21.
Guess what? Walmart was out of 21’s.
I rushed over to Walker’s Office Supply and found the correct cartridge. Paid a pretty penny too.
I rushed home.
It was impossible to figure out how to remove the dried-out cartridge. Am I giving too many details?
I gave my daughter a frantic SOS. She begrudgingly came over and took out the old cartridge and put the new one in. It was always easy for me to change your cartridges, Canon, dear.
Then there was a whole nerve-wracking alignment procedure. I did it.
Then there was a paper jam.
Then it printed about ten pages impeccably when the printer stopped. Another paper jam.
Then a flashing message that the cradle would not move, and, indeed, it would not. Under duress, my daughter came over. She couldn’t make the cradle move either. “It’s broken,” she said. Oh, great, now I have a new cartridge for a new printer that is no longer working.
Finally, as I was in tears, my daughter printed out the rest for me on her printer.
By this time, the post office had closed. But my daughter had advised me that there is a stamp machine in the post office so I would still be all right.
Finally I got everything together, and rushed to the post office to discover that their stamp machine was out of order, and so I have to wait until today (Monday) to mail out this important packet anyway.
Dear Canon, I know that if I still had you, I wouldn’t have had such an awful day.
I will always buy printers like you in the future.
Your biggest fan,
Gloria
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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