"You changed the toner and now it won't stop printing!!eleventy!!"

[Dave1982]

If I ever need day surgery, remind me not to get it done at this hospital. That whole damn department seems to be staffed with idiots.

These are the same guys that destroyed their new copier twice.

They called for a toner cartridge for one of their printers. It was a very plain vanilla call.

Yet before I had even made it back to the copy center after swapping out the toner, they called down to say the machine "won't stop printing" because I "did something."



Apparently it didn't occur to them that the printer would start printing whatever was still in the queue once the toner was replaced. We told them that and they insisted otherwise.

I went back up there and it had stopped. There was maybe 50 pages on there, and all of it was normal stuff that they print.


Morons!

[Halo_miles]

That's the beauty of ineptitude. People don't realize that there's a queue from the stuff that they print, and proceed to freak out.

[sms001]

I've had similar calls. At one realtor's office, I was VERY sorely tempted to rush back in and start flailing wildly at any button I could reach, screaming "Oh my God, what have I done, what have I done?" Still wish I had.

[Mr Hero]

If they keep freaking out like that, you'll be back very quickly to replace the toner again.

[IT Grunt]

I've had the same thing. "Well it was just fine until you messed with it!" When in reality it was a pre-existing condition that they'd just failed to notice until the IT guy came and did something that was needed. Like the one time I had a request to install printers on a series of PCs. I did so. Then the guy claims that the screen was all 'fuzzy' because I installed the printer. The reality was they had the LCD monitor set to a very low res below it's native resolution. But of course it was because I installed the printer that the screen got all fuzzy!!

Worst case I can recall was a co-worker from years ago when I worked for a bank. On the way home he stopped in at a branch, cashed a check, and went home. An hour later the server crashed. Pure coincidence. Someone saw him there, though, so "It was working just fine until he messed with it!"

Can't win for losing.

[Automan Empire]

Gah! This is so common in auto repair that it has its own acronym.

E.S.Y. = Ever Since You...
The formula is simple- anyone can play and it takes no automotive knowlege or even common sense. "Ever since you replaced my brake light bulb, the front license plate has been rattling." "Ever since you replaced the radio antenna, my gas mileage has dropped 5 miles a gallon!"

You do NOT want to become nicknamed Mr. Eversinceyou at the auto shop!

[Catwoman2965]

Or my friend, her husband and their car. She had an old POS car, 13 years old, with 150K+ on it. and a second transmission, about 7-8 years old. this is important. Had issues with it starting several times, but as soon as it got to the mechanic, nothing happened. Typical. MY mechanic who I highly recommended to them. Her hubby is cheap. irrationally, and obsessively so. the car NEEDED to be replaced yesterday but until they could pay cash for hte ONE car he would consider, no dice. no car loan, no nothing. so they kept pouring money into it, as in new tires and so on.

so the third time around (first computer showed a sensor, which he replaced, second, nothing) it showed it was teh starter. so he replaced it. the NEXT day the transmission blew. totally coincidental, as it was an old car, on its last legs. but her hubby went down and screamed, yelled, threatened and threw a tantrum worthy of their 2.5 year old at the mechanics. saying he was going to sue (he wont since he's too cheap and has no leg to stand on), he will discredit him (he won't since he has no friends and no one to tell) and will reverse the repair charge for the starter (he won't since its MY friend's credit card).

she even told me she had lost all respect for him after his tirade. i have as well. if someone messees up, well, you politely go discuss it, NOT rant and rave

[PepperElf]

I was thinking of Chief Cheese on bread today and how he acted with slow computers. If he tried opening a file and the computer was slow to respond, he'd keep on double-clicking it anyway. Thus the computer would be even SLOWER because it would now be trying to open 20 copies of the same file.

likewise... I'm betting that's the real reason the printer wouldn't stop printing.
they likely figured that trying to print again was the magical fix, not realizing that those print jobs don't just vanish on their own.

[ApolloSZ]

As soon as I read the title, I knew they had queued print jobs that it was catching up on....

I actually was hoping to be dissappointed that it wasn't that.... XD

[dalesys]

We discontinued opiates on the ward and the patients are producing toner like crazy...

[wolfie]

That's the beauty of ineptitude. People don't realize that there's a queue from the stuff that they print, and proceed to freak out.

AARGH! If you look at the stuff that comes out after fixing the printer, you'll probably find half a dozen copies of the same thing, because if something doesn't print, you try again rather than checking to see if something's wrong with the printer. At work, when I refill the printer in the driver's room, or re-plug the network cable that became dislodged, it'll inevitably spit out multiple copies of peoples' printouts.

[fireheart]

There's been ONE time when my boyfriend was testing out the networking of the home printer.

He then sends through ONE picture as a test run.

End result? The printer literally spewed out about 100+ pages worth of code. I kid you not.

No, we hadn't been queuing up anything else.

We had to pull the plug (literally) on the printer because nothing would make it stop. Eventually we turned it back on and now it churns out images JUST fine

[Argabarga]

Gah! This is so common in auto repair that it has its own acronym.

E.S.Y. = Ever Since You...

Hoo Boy.... do I *love* people playing that game. Best one we ever got was the guy who was convinced his car was UNSAFE to drive, because the cheap plastic bolt that held the spare tire down in the trunk cracked when our driver went to remove it on a tire change call.

Yup, that made the car "unsafe" and he demanded we tow it back in, since it was obviously unsafe to drive, and fix it.

Manager offered to buy him a new spare tire nut from the dealership and call it a day

There were lawsuit threats and I still have no idea how it ended. People that ignorant of how cars work should just stay very very FAR away from them, for everyone's sake.

[Jetfire]

There's been ONE time when my boyfriend was testing out the networking of the home printer.

He then sends through ONE picture as a test run.

End result? The printer literally spewed out about 100+ pages worth of code. I kid you not.

Readable code or jibberish? Sounds like somewhere it got confused about what it was printing and printed the picture as text or something (ie printed printable characters for the bytes that make up the picture).

Hoo Boy.... do I *love* people playing that game. Best one we ever got was the guy who was convinced his car was UNSAFE to drive, because the cheap plastic bolt that held the spare tire down in the trunk cracked when our driver went to remove it on a tire change call.

Yup, that made the car "unsafe" and he demanded we tow it back in, since it was obviously unsafe to drive, and fix it.

Manager offered to buy him a new spare tire nut from the dealership and call it a day

There were lawsuit threats and I still have no idea how it ended. People that ignorant of how cars work should just stay very very FAR away from them, for everyone's sake.

It was a load bearing tire nut, hence why the car is unsafe after it breaks.

[suburbandecay]

There's been ONE time when my boyfriend was testing out the networking of the home printer.

He then sends through ONE picture as a test run.

End result? The printer literally spewed out about 100+ pages worth of code. I kid you not.

No, we hadn't been queuing up anything else.

We had to pull the plug (literally) on the printer because nothing would make it stop. Eventually we turned it back on and now it churns out images JUST fine

You'll see this error when you use the wrong print driver to send to the printer. In my case, I used a postscript driver to print to a copier that couldn't handle postscript.