Our parish magazine lies on the floor, half copied.
One side of each page was copied on Thursday morning between 7.30 and 9.00. At 9.00 a lady from the parish came to complete the copying, doing the reverse sides. A single sheet went through the copier and there was a grinding noise and it came to a halt.
I’m not sure whether this is the twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth time it has broken down in twelve months. It is only three years old and we can’t afford a new one, so have to try to get by with what we have got.
I phoned the company immediately and was told the engineer was in our area and would be with me that day. Afraid of missing him, I hung around the house the whole day, he never appeared.
Yesterday morning at 9.15, I phoned the company. “I phoned at this time yesterday and you told me that the engineer would call”.
“Yes, but he was delayed. You are next on the list”.
“Have you any idea how long that means?”
“You are next on the list. He will be with you shortly”.
I made sure someone was here the whole day, including asking a friend who had come from England to visit us to mind the place for a couple of hours. The engineer never came.
It’s bank holiday weekend now. It will be Tuesday before the company opens again. When it does open the engineer will have to go off to the big firms who have had problems over the weekend and who pay for priority treatment. We can’t afford to pay for priority treatment.
Our photocopier is a lesson in the fact that little people count for nothing. We have no economic muscle, we have no influence, we have no means of paying to jump the queue.
Perhaps I should be glad it’s only a photocopier and if the parish magazine is a week late, it’s not the end of the world. Imagine what the world would be like if serious things happened that way, if you could buy your way to the head of the queue, if you could always ensure you got served first. Imagine if serious things in the world were organized the way our photocopier company works. Imagine if something like health care was run in such a way – people would never accept it, would they?