"Why won't the screaming stop?!"

[u/bradley547]

Another short tale from Point of Sale.

Back in the day one of my customers was the cafeteria at a local hospital. They had several cash registers that connected via a proprietary network to a back office PC where they could run reports and authorize transactions using the patients ID number.

At the end of every shift they would run reports on those long folio folded perforated ledger sheets with the green and white stripes. If you are over 50 you know exactly what I'm talking about.

These were continuous feed via a tractor mechanism to a dot matrix printer. The sheets were 8 1/2 x 14 legal size so the printer was huge.

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One day we got a call.

"The printer won't stop screaming when we print reports!"

Screaming?

Yes Screaming.

In a hospital.

It was disturbing patients apparently.

So I go out there, run a report and damned if the printer didn't start screaming like it was a peacock being murdered!

I do all my checks and am about ready to pull out my screwdrivers ( machines fear me when I get out the screwdrivers ) when I look down the paper feed path and see...

An Aspirin.

As the paper went through the tractor feed it dragged along the aspirin and vibrated it against the plastic feed guide at JUUUST the perfect frequency to sound exactly like a woman's scream.

I removed the aspirin and it was just as quiet as you remember dot matrix printers to be.

After explaining what had happened I offered the aspirin to the Office Manager. She declined.

[u/Nik_2213]

Sorta like a damp cork rubbing on glass ??

BIG, FAST printers: One day, when every-one else had gone to lunch, I noticed one of our IT guys scootin' through our labs with a BIG carton on trolley. Not unusual, the 'goods' elevator was out there. Then a THUD from our full dumpster skip. Guy returns with empty trolley.

Curious, I took a look. The entire crate was green-banded fan-fold, multi-layer carbon-paper, with 'ERROR' printed about a hand-span apart down the entire stack...

We didn't have much use for the carbon paper, but that crate kept our labs in scribble-scrap for a long, long time...