Listen to a conversation between a student and a computer lab administrator.
Excuse me. Do you know that all the printers over in the student center have stopped working?
There are eight printers connected to the computers there.You are saying they are all broken?
Yes, I just came from there.There's a lot of frustrated students.
So many classes have papers due this afternoon that everyone is trying to print out their stuff at the same time.
Those printers got overworked and now they all have paper jams or some other problem.Can you fix them?
Well, not really. I'm just an administrator. Most of our actual technicians are students who take the job on the side.
Where are they?
Well, most of the students who work at the computer labs study at the engineering school, and unfortunately they all took the day off.I think they have some big exams tomorrow.
How can there be no technicians working on the biggest deadline day of the semester?
Well, there is one technician working at the computer lab in the arts building.Actually, he just sent me an email message saying there was a huge crowd there, and he could not figure out why.
Because people need to print their papers.There must be something you can do.People need those printers working.
Well, we just ordered new printers and next month we are replacing the old printers over the student center with a brand new set of printers.
But the deadline for submitting papers is just two hours away.
I'm afraid there's nothing I can do. Your best bet is to probably head to the arts building and get in line there.
But how did this happen again?Last semester when the all printers broke down, the president of the college got involved.He sent out an email message to all the students saying that he was going to personally do something to make sure that the situation was resolved.
That's right.When we had our budget meeting at the beginning of the semester, the president was there.That's not something he usually does, but he wanted to make sure we ordered the new printers.
The new printers that are coming next month?
Yeah, I ordered them as soon as the budget was approved.It's a shame. But the purchasing process being what it is...
You know what? It's possible some of the printers are malfunctioning because they ran out of ink.Tm not a technician, but if that's what's wrong I could fix it.I guess I'll grab some ink cartridges and go over to the student center and check.No guarantees, sorry, but it might fix the problem.