I'm so glad it's Friday. I've been back at work for a week and a half, and it's been insane. Crazy people, wacky machines, crazy people, and all sorts of stuff to keep me busy during the day. Speaking of work and technology, what on earth is up with copy machine technology?

Last week during the "training" meetings, people were going on about which copy machines they could use. Could they use the regular copy machine? Or the Gestetner? Much ado was made about which one everyone could use any old time, and which one required prior training in order to use. Um, yeah.

Ever heard the commercials for these guys? To me, Gestetner is just another company that makes copy machines. But apparently, to the rest of the working world (or at least the school at which I work), the Gestetner is no ordinary copy machine. It is instead treated with reverence and fear, and referred to as "The Gestetner".

As a matter of course, The Gestetner cannot be used by just anyone. Only those who've gone to special all-day workshops for training can use the blasted thing. And we all know how useful copy machine training is:

During meeting and immediately afterward:

"Oh my god! It's so easy now. I know everything there is to know about The Gestetner. Sure, it's far more complicated than any copy machine ever needs to be, but it does so much more! It doesn't matter that I'll never use 90% of those fancy bells and whistles, it's cool!"

Two days later:

"Okay, let's see here. I need to make thirty copies, so I click here. Oh, shit! I just shrunk it 30%! Dammit! Why's this thing have to be so complicated? Had I not gone through that stupid training, I probably could have figured this thing out anyway!"

Basically, what I'm getting at is that, training or no, we all still learn how to use those damned machines by trial and error anyway. Why, then, bother with training at all? We just need to own up to the fact that copy machines suck, and we will all forever be incompetent when we use them.