The Workhorse is Lame

I confess. I am addicted to stuff. New stuff. More stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. That’s why my house is bursting at the seams. Too much stuff.

When I was little, my mom had a name for it. She said I had the gimmes. When we went to the store, I would say gimme this or gimme that. I don’t seem to recall that I got everything I wanted. But I’ve been told that I was a spoiled child, so maybe I got more than I remember.

Anyway, impulse buying has long been an issue for me. Not only don’t I have room for more stuff. I can’t afford to buy more stuff. But I lust after things. Currently, I’m lusting after a saddle. Not even a new one. A good used one is what I dream of. But things get in the way. Like the fact that I don’t actually own a horse. No, I don’t lust after a horse. I’m happy to borrow Admiral.

In recent days, for some reason I started lusting after a new printer for my office. Specifically, one of those four-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax things. I have no idea why this has suddenly caused a huge case of the gimmes to flare up. I have a THREE-in-one (no fax) that works fine except for the occasional paper jam. It prints lovely color photos. It makes copies and it prints my manuscripts or anything else that I need.

But it’s three years old and it’s been well used. I fear it may die in the middle of some important project.

Not really, but that’s what I’ve been telling myself to rationalize my printer lust.

Ah, I’ve seen some beauties. They print fast. Mine is slow. They hold lots and lots of paper. Mine has a very shallow paper tray. They print two sided without my assistance. Think of all the time I would save as I print Pennwriters brochures.

While I was jotting research notes in Staples this afternoon, I was approached by a sales guy who must have smelled the gimmes on me. I explained that I was just investigating the prices and features and had NO INTENTION OF BUYING ANYTHING TODAY. I didn’t. Honest. I figured I’d compare prices, check things out on line, and go back next week. By then, the printer lust might have passed. I might have developed a case of the gimmes for a digital camera by then. I’m like that.

This sales guy played me beautifully. He must have been able to tell that I really, REALLY wasn’t spending two or three hundred dollars on impulse. Plus another hundred for ink. Damn that stuff is expensive! So he came at me from the flank. He said the two words that caused my printer lust to go into orbit: LASER PRINTER.

I’ve heard that in publishing the ink jet printer is fast following the old dot matrix printers into the realm of obsolescence. Laser printers are the future. Of course, to get all the features of a ink jet printer, I’d have to pay mucho dinero. HOWEVER, the sales guy pointed out, I could get a good “workhorse” laser printer for pretty cheap. Get a four-in-one ink jet for color photos and brochures, but use the laser jet for manuscript pages. My cost per page would drop precipitously. Considering all the pages I print just to edit and then run through the shredder, a penny a page versus a nickel per page sounded extremely inviting. Not to mention, I like that term “workhorse.”

So I brought home a Brother HL-2140 Laser printer, set it up, installed the drivers (no, I don’t really know what that means), printed a few pages just to see if it worked. And it did.

For about five minutes. Then all the lights on the panel started flashing. I did the reboot thing. Still flashing lights. According to the user guide, this is bad. At least when I called customer service, the tech spoke fluent English.

Bottom line: my new workhorse is dead.

So tomorrow I take it back. I called. Staples is out of that model. Lots of folks buying workhorses I guess. But they promised to order a new one and ship it to me free.

Sigh.

So my printer lust has been dashed. The gimmes are gone. Maybe next time, I’ll resist the whole impulse buy inclination.

Probably not.