...rough start...

One of the best perks about the school where I work is that we have a full-time staff member whose office is the copy room.  She spends her day making copies requested by the teachers in the building (among various other duties).  Without her, I would never leave the building.

All semester, whenever I've submitted a copy request, I've asked for the same quantity.  Well, recently I have noticed that my last class seems to run short on assignments, handouts, etc.  This is quite mysterious since my rosters haven't changed.  I don't understand it, but it has become a recurring problem.

This morning I remembered to be a little proactive...Before school started, I made my way to the copy room to make a few extra copies of an assignment for today so I wouldn't run into any problems during my last class.

The Copy Lady (as we reverently call her) was busy receiving money for students' lunch accounts.  The copy machine was printing something that I figured a teacher had sent to from their computer.  (Yeah, we've got one of those high-tech copy machines that function like a wireless printer.)  I put my original in the machine, punched 8, then hit start.  The machine spit out my copies.  I picked them up, walked over the paper-cutter & cut them in half.  (Don't worry, that was intentional.)  Then I punched holes in the papers so students can easily keep them in their binders.

As I approached the door, through the sea of students making sure they could eat today, another teacher had walked in.  I saw him approach the copy machine with a puzzled look on his face.  I heard him mumble something about how he often prints documents to this printer, but when he gets there, he can't find them.  I walked out the door.

Then I remembered the papers that were printing when I came in.

I walked back into the copy room.

Me:  Uhhhhh...I may have accidentally taken your copies...and cut them...and hole punched them...

I checked.  Yep.  There they were:  unfamiliar pages, cut in half, with holes in them.

Me:  I'm so sorry!  I just grabbed the papers off the machine and didn't even look at them before I slashed them!

Other Teacher:  (laughing)  Well, I guess they won't get a study guide!

Shoot.  What a rough way to start the day...And I thought I was so on top of things...