Every so often Michael Buerk wanders into my office and asks if he can borrow my Fax machine (I’ve no idea why he does this).
The only problem is that despite the fact that I sit next to the huge beige monstrosity and I am employed as a technologist I have no idea how it actually works.
The ubiquity of e-mail means that I’ve only had to use a fax machine about 3 times in my life (and always at the behest of an estate agent) and though most are fairly self explanatory ours is a monster (It even has a Mercury button). It has a help button that when you press it displays a message in its tiny screen “Press any button for help on that feature” and then when you press the button for example “Confirm” it prints out a sheet of paper with “Help Index #88934 CONFIRM BUTTON -: PRESS TO CONFIRM ACTIONS” written in tiny letters at one corner.
The net result is that I fiddle arround trying to help him with an array of buttons that all go bleep and do nothing whilst the 999 music plays in my head and I think “Little did they know that playing with the fax machine would prove deadly!”
I can’t work photocopiers either…