Office Politics: The Race to Be Copy Room Manager

As part of our continuing coverage of this year's Office Political campaign, we asked the candidates for the position of Copy boy, the incumbent, John Chironna, and his opponent, Tom Gilpin, to join the editorial board for a side-by-side interview. We invited each to make an opening statement:

John Chironna: First, I just wanted to thank my supporters and staff, both those who are help me in my re-election campaign and those who have made the last four years the most productive years this copy room has ever seen. I can run on my record of crisp, clean copies and a spotless record of collation. And I hope you agree. Thank you.

Tom Gilpin: Let's be frank here. As long as Mr. Chironna has the latest automated equipment, well, I guess he can do the job. I, however, have a long, distinguished career in the copy and duplication sector. I was there with carbon papers and mimeographs. I've been there from the first liquid Xerox machine to the latest color-based printer. Mr. Chironna has played the technology card for too long.

With all our warrantees about to expire, there's a very real chance that when you go into the copy room and say, "I need 100 copies of this" the copy room would have to say, "I'm sorry, sir, the machine is down. We can't make your copies." I don't want that day to come.

Editorial Board: First off, Mr. Chironna, your opponent has made quite an issue of the toner shortage of June, claiming lack of foresight on your part. How would you respond to that?

JC: This is exactly the kind of negative campaign we have come expect from Mr. Gilpin. There was no toner shortage. Yes, we were forced to close the copy room one day, but that was because our shipment of toner was delayed; lost and mis-routed by the shipping company. I made the calls, I got the company to re-ship and we were back in business the next morning.

ED: Rebuttal, Mr. Gilpin.

TG: Well, there you go again, Jon. There was no shipment coming. We ran out of toner because Jon forgot to order it. No sense of inventory at all. Once he realized his error, he had the toner company overnight an emergency supply. At great additional expense. I've learned the copy room from the ground up, I worked with Stan Delaney and have tried to emulate him...

JC: You are no Stan Delaney!

ED: Mr. Gilpin, a lot of people feel you're too entrenched in the past. In this day of laser jet technology, you still talk about the need for Photostats and carbon duplicates. Can you be a copy boy for the 21st century?

TG: Technology is fine in its place. But what is needed here is a back-up system, a fail-safe---

JC: Perhaps Mr. Gilpin is so fond of mimeographs because he's hooked on them.

TG: I beg your pardon?

JC: I have a series of affidavits here telling of Mr. Gilpin's long history of mimeograph sniffing!

TG: That's a lie! I may have once held it up to my nose, but I never inhaled.

JC: I can only imagine what shape he'd be in if he managed to get a mimeograph of his own.

ED: That seems rather harsh.

TG: Maybe Mr. Chironna dislikes mimeographs and carbon paper because it's so much harder to do this! I hold in my hand a series of Xerox copies of a human behind!

JC: But---

TG: Exactly!

JC: You fiend.

TG: A behind that my experts can prove belongs to on John Chironna! This is the kind of copy machine mistreatment we want to endorse? It's time to send the copy room a message! And frankly, can we even be sure Chironna won the last election? My sources have told me many of the ballots marked for Chironna were actually Photostats of other ballots! Now, who would be able to have copies of ballots made?

Unfortunately, a fistfight broke out here with little else intelligible on the transcripts. No one was seriously hurt though the editorial room is going to need a new carpet and some coasters. Next time for our Office Politics 2003 coverage, we'll have Betty Murphy and Yolanda Perez debate for the position of supervisor of the secretarial pool.