I'm used to working in quite a hi-tech sort of industry that's got lots of machinery and everything, but now I'm going to a place that has no machinery as such, apart from a typewriter.
Outside the ring, with a weapon, he would have been the sort of man Kostya would have been happy to avoid, but inside the ring he was plodding and mechanical.
It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant — it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery — and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided.