Mrs. Nice Guy Don't Pay Too Good

With about twenty-five minutes left before first bell, I decide to run some copies this morning. The workroom was dark, meaning that nobody had been moving in there for the last ten minutes, and the timer had shut off the light. I churned out ninety one-siders. I opened two reams of paper and stoked drawer one for my imminent onslaught of copies. I ran ninety double-siders. And was summarily joined by a colleague bearing pages.


"Do you need copies?"

"Yes. When you're done." 

"Very many?"

"Fifty singles and fifty two-sided." 

"Are they for today?"

"Uh huh. It's my test." 

"As soon as these are done, you can go ahead."

"No, I don't want to interrupt." 

"Go ahead. I don't need mine until Thursday."

"That's so nice. Are you sure? I can wait." 

"No. Go ahead."

Colleague put her copies on when mine were done. I shuffled my papers over to the cluttered mailbox staging area, and loitered. No need to go back to my room. Her copies wouldn't take long. Then I could resume. As the Kyocera spit out the last ten copies, two more colleagues walked in, separately, also bearing papers.

"Are you both here for copies?"

"Uh huh," replied the first one. The other busied himself with the broken Xerox. Heh, heh. Like he thought it was going to work. It will sometimes be coerced into squeezing out a single copy at a time. Then it jams. Once cleared, it will give you another single copy. Kind of time-intensive.

"I'm almost done, but Val let me go ahead of her. Thanks so much, Val."

"I'm done. I'll try second hour. If it still works." I gathered my clutter and set out for my classroom. Because I'm not going to be THAT teacher. The one who monopolizes the copier with consumables that won't be used until the twelfth of never. Or May. The most immediate need gets the copier, in my world. The early bird can share the worm. So what if my best laid plans went awry? I refuse to be responsible for students sitting idle because their work is not ready. I'm sure if they could, they would thank me for their tests being hot off the copier. Warm, blank forms eager to assess their knowledge.

The down side is that I wasted viable lesson-staging time by foolishly waiting to regain control of cantankerous Kyocera. Kid-free time. When concentration is possible. Surely the universe will level my playing field. Karma for Mrs. Nice Guy.

Unless this event was payment for my non-injurious face-plant onto the basement floor on Friday.