I hate laminators.

It looks like the skinnier version of a printer and is as much a pain. Both can suffer from paper/document jams.

And unfortunately, I have to experience all that crap.

The whole hullabaloo started on Tuesday when I was trying to laminate some A3-sized posters in the office laminator. In my opinion, it should have been retired from service long ago. But since the company is keeping costs down, the vintage machine was expected to be used until the end of time.

It was working fine for a while, but then one of the posters I loaded got stuck. I watched in a mixture of amusement and horror as the paper and laminating plastic (the paper lies in between 2 layers of plastic) got scrunched up inside the machine, with only one corner peeking out. There was this horrible crackling sound and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of burnt plastic. I tried in vain to tug it out, but finally gave up and told my supervisor.

The repairman was called and the very next day, Wednesday, my good old friend was back in action.

Fine. I laminated a few more posters that day. It was kinda boring and the papers feeds into the machine extremely slowly. As such I was daydreaming a little when I realized something.

My poster went in, but nothing came out!

A couple of swear words later, I told my supervisor and the stupid machine was once again hauled off for repair.

On Thursday, I approached the laminator with dread. After plugging it in, I tried to load another poster in, but no matter how I tried, something was blocking it. Apparently the machine was unrepairable. After force-feeding it posters continuously, it had finally choked on one and died, the killer piece still lodged inside.

I was kinda relieved, in a way. I was doing other stuff when my supervisor indicated that he had managed to borrow a laminator from another department. This was a newer model, and I thought my troubles were over...

Unfortunately, as expected, another poster got scrunched up and stuck inside, and the accompanying chao tar smell of burnt plastic wafted out. The repairman was called, and after freeing the paper, it was hurriedly returned to the department it came from.

As for me, heh, I gave up and went to a photo print shop. No one bothered to question my reasons.

Some things are just best left to the professionals.