I hopped into work this morning with a clear plan.
Coffee. Code. Fix one irritating little bug in an AI app. Pretend the unread notifications do not exist. Go home before somebody says “quick sync”.
A disciplined day.
Then I met Bruce.
Bruce is the office printer.
Bruce is a cunt.
One page
I needed one page printed.
Not a novel. Not a glossy annual report. Not a full-colour architectural drawing of a shopping centre.
One page.
I clicked print.
Bruce made a noise like a possum being forced through a fax machine, thought about his options, and announced PAPER JAM.
There was no paper jam.
I opened the tray. Nothing.
I opened the back. Nothing.
I opened a third flap that I am reasonably certain exists only to make users feel involved. Nothing.
Closed everything.
Bruce reconsidered.
LOAD A4 PAPER.
There was A4 paper in the tray.
Not some. A fucking stack.
Negotiations deteriorate
At this point I had already spent the morning debugging software produced partly by AI, which means I had experienced the very modern pleasure of reading code that was syntactically confident and spiritually confused.
I was prepared for ambiguity.
Bruce was different.
Software will at least give you a stack trace while it ruins your day. Bruce gives you a tiny LCD screen with the emotional range of a parking inspector.
I removed the paper.
I put the same paper back.
Bruce warmed up.
A roller turned.
Hope entered my body like a dangerous chemical.
PAPER JAM.
Still no jam.
I stared at him.
He stared at me with the expressionless confidence of a machine that knows HR will take its side.
Forty-three minutes
Forty-three minutes.
That is how long it took to print one page.
During that time I restarted Bruce, reseated the paper, checked every door, removed a toner cartridge for reasons I cannot now defend, and briefly considered whether printers can smell fear.
Eventually he printed it.
No explanation. No apology. No triumphant mechanical fanfare.
Just one slightly warm sheet of paper sliding into the tray as if the previous forty-three minutes had been a misunderstanding between equals.
They were not.
I respect the hatred
Here is the thing: I almost admire Bruce.
Most modern technology desperately wants to be liked. Apps beg for ratings. SaaS products send cheerful onboarding emails. AI assistants apologise if you look at them sternly.
Bruce does not give a shit.
Bruce has one job and treats performing it as a personal concession.
There is clarity in that.
Tomorrow I will hop back into work. I will build software. I will debug whatever deranged little thing the models invented overnight.
And Bruce will sit in the corner, silent and patient.
Waiting for me to need two pages.