I'm a Copy Machine

9:17 a.m. I get my name badge. "Kinko's - The Copy Center. Dan."

10:20 a.m. A customer hands a large drawing to Jason and asks him to reduce it. He does this complicated job briskly and efficiently. How hard was that? I ask. "It was supereasy," he says. Jason sounds exactly like Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

10:57 a.m. Shedric, a shift leader, shows me the LectroJog. It looks like a magazine rack hooked up to a life-support system. He drops a messy stack of 500 or so copies into the machine and flicks a switch. The LectroJog bounces up and down, looking not unlike the throbbing blur of a hardware-store paint mixer. Shedric turns off the machine and pulls out a perfect stack.

10:59 a.m. Shedric - he's got long fingernails, three gold rings, and a gold hoop in each ear - shows me the next stage of our project. We've got to cut this stack in half, and for that we need another machine. This one looks like a deli-meat slicer, or maybe a guillotine for extremely small people. Shedric positions the stack for me. I press two red buttons, and the supersharp blade splits the copies in two with the precision of a trained assassin. "Do you ever use this to slice roast beef?" I ask. "Nah," he says with a smile. I notice that he's got a gold tooth stamped with the design of a rose.

11:09 a.m. "Thank you for calling Kinko's. Powerful presentations start here. This is Dan. How may I help you?" That's how we answer the phone.

12:30 p.m. Rebecca corrals me for my next project - another round of copying and cutting. Her badge reads "3 Years of Service." "This one's not due until the 15th," she assures Sean, an assistant manager. "So if he screws it up, we'll have time to fix it." Thanks, Rebecca.

12:44 p.m. Traffic into the store has slowed, so I rest against the front counter. Rebecca slaps me on the ribs. "Don't lean on the counter. It looks like you're bored." Time to find Jason.

12:45 p.m. Where are you from? I ask my coworker. "I'm from all over, man," Jason replies. By day, Jason tells me, he works at Kinko's; by night he plays in two hard-core bands. One is called The Cruelty of Mars. The other is called Boesasoka. "That's Japanese for street-punk-degenerate."

12:49 p.m. Kim, the store manager ("10 Years of Service"), punches up some data on the computer - 184 customers so far. Pretty typical.

12:51 p.m. Dan: 231 Minutes of Service.

12:57 p.m. "Dude, wanna see something cool?" It's Jason, who doesn't wait for the answer. He slips a thick black ring from one nostril to another. The ring wobbles a bit, straddling his septum.

1:38 p.m. Wayne, the only coworker with a ponytail, shows me the videoconference room. This guy is a master, the Roone Arledge of videoconferencing. He's setting up the room for the customer who's just arrived for a 1:45 appointment. The customer's name is Steve Martin. He's here for a video job interview. He's nervous.

3:00 p.m. The second shift begins. It runs until 11 p.m.

3:08 p.m. Steve Martin is done with his interview. He's chipper: "It went great."

3:53 p.m. "This is Kinkoid Central," says Sean. We're sitting in a windowed office just off the store floor. Coworkers buzz about. Sean opens a desk drawer and pulls out a green Excedrin bottle. He dumps the tablets into four palms that have appeared out of nowhere. "Kinko's Gold," he says. I open my palm too.

4:57 p.m. I'm bored. I lift the cover of a self-service machine and make a copy of my face. Daria, a second-shift coworker, catches me in the act. "You know," she says sternly, "that works a lot better on the color copier."

6:31 p.m. There's a putrid smell in the air. I wonder if anyone else notices it. I whisper my concern to Erik, a coworker. He looks to see if anyone is watching. Then he nods to a copier and whispers back, knitting me into his conspiracy: "I had to use degreaser."

7:26 p.m. A college-aged man has been photocopying samples of the Law School Admissions Test in the self-service area. He wants help punching three-ring-binder holes into his copies. I direct him to Daria, telling him I can't in good conscience help someone go to law school. A thought occurs: I may be Kinko's first conscientious objector.

8:35 p.m. A uniformed policewoman arrives to pick up her order - poster-sized laminations of news clips from Princess Di's funeral.

9:56 p.m. I'm tired. I lean up against the Roto Trimmer.

9:57 p.m. "If you got time to lean, you got time to clean," Thomas, another coworker, shouts at me. What is it with these people?

11:10 p.m. The graveyard shift began 10 minutes ago. The phone rings. A man needs PowerPoint slides for a presentation tomorrow morning. He's desperate. He has nowhere else to turn to. Philip, a second-shift coworker in computer services, says he can stay and help. The man is on his way. The store springs to life.