The fight between humanity and technology is real, my friends. I’ve waged battle on the front lines of the war and I’ve lived to tell the tale. It all started a few weeks ago when my fiancee and I decided to save some money and print our own wedding invitations. That was our first mistake.

Early on, we decided that we were going to use Stephanie’s parents’ printer for this delicate job. That’s when things went wrong. For the next hour, we wrestled with the beast. The photo tray centered our strangely small papers, but the computer insisted on printing as if it was off to the right. It escalated from there. Without the tray, the printer skewed the pages wildly. It would print an inch too high or three inches too low.

We got frustrated. Maybe printing with more paper would help the feeder catch. Perhaps slowing down the print speed would fix it. Nothing worked. The Printer of Doom mocked us at every turn. It made horrible crunching, rasping sounds. After destroying all of our test sheets, we finally gave up.

Dejected, we left believing that we would have to go to Kinkos to get our cursed invitations printed. Later that evening, we went to my place and decided to try again. But this time, we would use my printer — an ancient inkjet that I found in a dumpster ten years ago. And amazingly, it printed the invitation correctly the first time.

With the happy hum of my old printer filling the room, we could finally relax. It was over. The Printer of Doom won the battle, but we won the war. Take that, evil office robots.

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Jonny is a writer and fighter of printers and office chairs in Tacoma, WA. Find him on Twitter.