A trip to my local bank branch is never anything to get excited about. It should be uneventful. Today was just a waste of time. I never got any further than the queue. At least I made it to the front of the queue.

After hanging around waiting for service for 10 minutes I decided I could use my time better doing something else, in fact anything. It was not a shortage of staff, lots of them all doing something yet oblivious to the length of the growing queue. The customer being served (lucky person) needed something printing…..

It didn’t print. First the person serving tried to fix it – open doors, press buttons, fiddle with things. Then someone else who was doing something serious got involved. You can tell when a bank discussion is serious, both the banker and the client are sitting down. Now there were two people opening doors, pressing buttons, fiddling with things and repeatedly checking the full paper tray. This was one of those big multi-function photocopier devices. On a good day it will photocopy, scan, fold, staple and print from your office network, connect to head office and still have space for 10 boxes of spare toner inside it. At least the activity was a distraction from the advertising TV which showed the same thing every 30 seconds. On the positive side I did discover about a great new savings plan.

I realised that I had seen this scene many times before. Not only in banks but anywhere that has one of these machines. The same pointless waste of time has taken place in any office, workplace and country I have been to. Eventually a combination of button pressing swearing, ignoring it or heaven forbid calling an engineer usually solves the problem and life continues until you next need something printed or copied. So instead of thinking about how I can make my next million or in my case, my first million I am thinking about all the time I and everyone else has lost over the years. I suspect I need to get out more!

As a technology person I have an intimate knowledge of printers, scanners and multi-function devices that can do lots of things in one box. It was back in the 80’s when I first discovered the technical process known as “check the cables stupid” and later in the 00’s I spent several years in Asia working with manufacturers of these devices. There was no shortage of technical skills or quality workmanship or investment in manufacturing. So why are we still wasting our lives messing around with these products. How hard can it be?

I only went to the bank to find out why something they were sending me had not arrived, so it was always a waste of time. As it was I left empty handed, an hour gone from my life instead of helping my business grow and contribute to GDP and the global economy. At least I found out about the great savings plan, only problem is I know after queuing to apply I will need to fill in a form which will probably need copying and printing…. so no thanks.