the enchanting perfume of winter

Perhaps the moodiest and most uncooperative piece of machinery at this shop is my plotter. You may or may not remember what that is from my days at Print Masters. The plotter is the big contraption that cuts the vinyl graphics, kind of like a giant printer except with a knife instead of an ink cartridge, and sheet vinyl instead of paper. My plotter at this job is such a bitch. Seriously, this thing honestly has moods. I shit you not. Some days it works awesome, and other days it won't do a damn thing. Sometimes it'll be working nicely and then suddenly, for no reason at all, spit out like 20 feet of vinyl in the middle of a job. Or randomly jam and chew up $20 worth of vinyl. Or it'll get distracted from what it's supposed to be cutting and just start cutting whatever it wants. You should see some of its creations -- it's quite talented. Perhaps I should have it do my graphic artwork on the computer for me so I don't have to. Some days, it'll be cutting just fine and then it'll just decide it doesn't want to cut a certain part of the lettering or design. Like today, on one section of wording for these banners I had to do, it said "Mill End Carpet Shops". Evidently, the word "Shops" offended the plotter, because it chose simply not to cut that word at all. It cut everything else perfectly, but skipped "Shops" altogether. Sometimes, my plotter decides to play a game with me called "put shit where it doesn't belong". For example, if I were to tell it to cut "Houkie", if it's feeling particularly playful it'll cut "Houki" and then put the "e" all the way over on the other side of the sheet of vinyl, cut right over the top of a bunch of other stuff that's already been cut (which sucks, because then I have to cut it ALL over again).