All of a sudden our office equipment has personality problems, which has me wondering who the heck is developing the programs for these inanimate objects. Sounds like someone trying to balance the functions of the left and right sides of our brain. Maybe it's a computer science major who minored in psychology. But with all the reality programs invading the airwaves, the last thing I would ever imagine would be our office equipment picking up the chants of the flood of dysfunctional people found on Dr. Phil, Oprah and the like.

Besides, I don't believe any of us want our office equipment demonstrating behavioral problems while requesting that we repair them. At least not me. I'm perfectly satisfied getting those familiar, longtime requests such as "out of paper," "low on toner" and the infamous "paper jam." That's enough information for me to respond accordingly. Besides, what the heck does "needs guidance" or "intervention" tell us anyway? Is our banal office equipment implying that it needs some sort of therapeutic response to help it get through the day? That would certainly be carrying the world of office machinery interaction to a whole new level of operation.

Honestly, when I first saw my computer flash the words that the upstairs printer needed an intervention, my initial thought was the printer had connected with a group of troubled teens or adults struggling with substance-abuse problems. But it was the printer, so after I stopped laughing, I realized an intervention was some programmer's convoluted way of telling me the darn thing was out of paper. What a ridiculous way of letting me know. I can only image what this machine might tell me when it's suffering from a significant ailment, like my optics need Visine or my drums are beating so bad I need aspirin. Or maybe it will simply start smoking to ease its overworked life.

But I really thought this odd language was unique to our relatively new printer until I went downstairs the other day to make copies. Not only did it tell me it was in trouble and "needed guidance" to solve its problem, but it absolutely refused to let me do a thing until I resolved the issue. In this case, "guidance" meant it was desperately low on toner. Unfortunately I had no idea how to fix that. So I guess we both needed guidance.

One of my co-workers even came over to try and clear everything, hoping it would let me make just one copy, but the machine stubbornly stuck to its needs, leaving me to once again revert to our upstairs tried and true fax machine that rarely complains about being the source of our abuse.

Which brings me back to my initial question, who the heck wrote the programs for these machines anyway? Did someone honestly think this touchy-feely form of expression would make these pieces of equipment more endearing to us? Or did these programmers think it would make these daily problems more tolerable if they sounded more lifelike?

So now I'm prepared for anything out of the ordinary to flash before my eyes. And I won't be surprised in the least if our fax machine finally acknowledges its abuse and starts endlessly beeping that it needs a massage. Or our Macs fade to black because they are overworked and need their beauty rest. Or worse yet, our phones just die because they are tired of listening to us chatter into the mouthpiece all day long.

On the other hand, if all that happened, we would all get a reprieve and it would turn into one hell of an intervention from the day-to-day of the newspaper business. Hey, maybe this new age dialogue isn't so crazy after all.

Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@svcn.com.