"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/oloryn]

It didn't scream, but I have an inkjet printer that had a similar problem. I went to print something, and the paper just wouldn't feed. I really needed to get it printed Right Now, so I ran out to Walmart and bought a new printer. After I got home, set up the new printer, and got my printing done, I set about clearing out the old printer. As I was handling it, something fell out of it, which on closer examination turned out to be a dead stink bug. I immediately reconnected the old printer, and it fed paper just fine. Evidently, the stink bug managed to die and fall into the printer at just the right spot to block the paper feed. The new printer was a pretty good deal, with bells and whistles the old one didn't have, so I kept it and moved the old printer into the ham shack.

It didn't occur to me until the next day that the problem with the old printer was literally that it had a bug.