Today at Noon, I am teaching a Marketing Class to the managers of all 21 Fillmore Real Estate Branch Offices. In order to have an interesting class, I created a PowerPoint presentation that describes what Marketing is and how to implement Marketing in selling a home. When I finished the presentation at 1:00am this morning, it looked great and I was very eager to show it to my “students” – until I got to work and was attacked by a ravenous gang of electronic objects.

From the moment I walked through the door of Fillmore’s Corporate Headquarters, everything from my printer, to the two copy machines to the very PowerPoint presentation I designed revolted against me. Somehow, in the time it took me to get from my house to the office – the PowerPoint presentation completely changed while on the floppy disk in my pocket. Almost every command, design and effect I gave certain portions of the presentation completely changed on its own, as if I put the disk in the computer and altered it myself. My dissolves now scroll, sentences that I wanted to fly in separately are now bunched together – and the entire presentation is not even close to what I designed so late into the evening last night. Simply incredible.

Realizing that the presentation was changed and there was nothing I could do about it, I decided to bow to the inanimate object and move onto the copy machine to make sets of the now-altered presentation for my “students.” I made 10 collated sets of the presentation without incident and then tried to make ten more – but was not allowed to do so. The copy machine – God Bless it – jammed twice, the first time getting a dozen pieces of paper stuck in every single crevice of the machine – and the second time completely shutting down and requiring service. Wanting desperately to take a baseball bat to the machine – but concerned that doing so would not look good after being here only two weeks, I moved onto the other copy machine in the office – which printed each page as nothing but a smear of black ink – making it impossible for me to finish copying my presentation.

Having no other choice, I came back to my desk and tried to print out each slide individually – only to have the paper jam twice and the printer flip out to the point where I had to turn it off and start over again. So now, thanks to the band of rabid electronics I encountered this morning, I now have to teach a class on Marketing – in a very bad mood.

I am so tired of saying how furious I get when what we can and cannot do are dictated by machines. I literally was not able to finish copying my presentation because the copy machines and my printer would not let me. How dare these infernal machines – that we as humans built mind you – function on their own schedule and be allowed to “behave” however they want. Instead of a Marketing Class, I would be happy to teach the electronic objects of this world the proper ways to serve the humans of this world – who last time I checked were the dominant species on this planet…

…it’s no wonder one of my old laptops is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.