“Karel, our printer’s doing something weird.”

Oh, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that in my eight years here. Luckily, the guy who came to my door in this instance is one of those who isn’t prone to panicking over trivialities, so I dutifully followed him over to his workspace.

Hmm. The printer was spitting out solid black sheets of paper, edge to edge and top to bottom. I unplugged the print server and the printer itself to stem the black tide, and made an intuitive leap that the toner cartridge might have been damaged in some fashion.

While I was unplugging things, I noticed a nearly-empty coffee cup, with a lipstick stain on the rim, next to the printer. I frowned a bit at this, but paid it no more mind.

The obvious solution appeared to be, “replace the toner cart.” So I popped open the case, briefly noted the coffee stain on the inside of the chassis, frowned again, and reached for the cartridge.

Now, you don’t ordinarily reach into a printer and expect to pull away a wet hand, but that’s precisely what happened. Yes, folks, somebody managed to spill coffee deep inside the machine, enough to form puddles on the toner cart, and that’s why it’s incapable of printing correctly.

Gee. I wonder if this has anything to do with that lipstick-smeared nearly-empty cup of coffee. What do you think?