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There are many irritants about most people's working day. From the guy with BO who sits next to you to the fact that the person who used the toilet cubicle before you seemed to have aimed at the seat, to the snacks machine that obstinately refuses to dispense the salt and vinegar crisps that you have already paid for.

Today's gripe. The printer. No, these aren't the usual gripes - takes ages to print, tears up the paper, always a queue. Actually, the office printer isn't too bad for the above. It's more what it says to me. Not speaks, not literally, but every time I finish printing something, a little message pops up on its LCD screen saying, "Goodbye. Print safely."

Let's just deconstruct that for the moment. "Goodbye". Hmm. Well, that's not terrible, I suppose. It recognises you've finished printing. That's acceptable.

"Print safely". Two things here. Firstly, I've just finished printing. Surely if I were going to suffer a nasty accident, this would have happened prior to walking away from the machine. Secondly, just how dangerous is it to print? Dangerous enough to need a safety warning? Exactly what is likely to happen to me? Will the printer cartridge leap out and attack me whilst I'm walking home? Will the paper feed grab hold of my jacket and suck me into the printer's mechanical bits? Will the reams of A4 paper launch simultaneously at my face to give me 500 synchronised paper cuts? I'm now paranoid.

Also, of course, this warning is futile, as you're walking away from the printer at this stage. So in actual fact, it's malevolent. Essentially it's saying, "I'm gonna getcha. You should have thought about safety and the dangers of reckless printing before you pressed print. But now it's too late to do anything about it."

Kind of puts that whole "goodbye" part of the message in a different light, doesn't it?