The printer is broken

[Daskinor]

About a year ago we converted the office to from a printer everywhere to a single beastly printer in the middle of the floor. It is a good printer, it works hard. But everyone hates the printer for the stupidest reasons.


1. "The printer is broken" - No its not, its out of paper

2. "The printer is broken" - Not its not its out of toner

3. "The printer is broken" - ARGHH, someone did not load the paper properly

4. "The printer is broken" - No, someone just decided to print 145 full color pictures off his digital camera and choked up the print server.

5. "The printer is broken" - It prints just fine? Wait the person before you did not clear out the copier settings.

6. "The printer is always down" - Hun? You guys just don't know how to USE the printer. So you sit there until I Deus Ex Machina away the stupidity.

7. "The printer is broken" Wow its actually broken, wait a second............. Did you disobey the sign that said "DO NOT FIX THIS PRINTER YOURSELF CALL HELPDESK" of course you did.

8. "Why is the printer downnnnnnnnnnnnnn I need to print NOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"- Did you get email that said it be down at lunch because you tree killers put 200k worth of prints on the damn thing in 6 months. Well you did, you just did not read it. Its only going to be an hour while the printer gets new drums. SUCK IT UP!!

9. "The copier is a piece of crap, when are we going to get a new one"- Wahhhhhhh, you just abuse the hell out of that one too.

10 "The printer is broken"- Oh it is actually broken, because.... you did not read the sign that says "If you are loading paper this is how you check for glue"

11. "The printer is broken" - Do you see the notice on the paper saying you need to put legal in to print your legal size document? Of course not.

12. "The printer is broken" - Yup you managed to break of part of the manual feed tray trying to load the legal paper.

13. "The printer is broken" - It prints fine, oh wait you needed to select color if you want color.

[Dips]

[twitch]

Over twenty years ago, I used to work at a super-shabby, super-cheap, super-cheesy travel package company and part of my job was ungumming the central printer. It was track fed. Yes, I know. I belive I mentioned it was over 20 years ago and the company was super-cheap.

[twitch]

So in that light...

14. "The printer is broken." No it isn't. SOMEBODY [ahem] ignored the sign and used line feed instead of form feed to advance the paper. Again.

15. "The printer is broken." No it isn't. Our mutual boss, Bob, abused his ability to jump the print queue to interrupt your hundred page print job at page 99 so he could reprint the 1 page he printed yesterday but lost on his desk. [Note to self: kill whoever told Bob how to do that.]

16. "The printer is broken." No it isn't. You'll have to reprint the entire 100 page report from the start (and hope Bob doesn't screw you again) because we both work for cheapskates who haven't heard that they make printers that let you select which pages you want to print.

[technical.angel]

8. "Why is the printer downnnnnnnnnnnnnn I need to print NOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"- Did you get email...

Yeah, but they probably only read their email in printed form.

[Eric the Grey]

3. "The printer is broken" - ARGHH, someone did not load the paper properly

Back when I worked for IBM, we had the big HP's that had the huge lower tray that could hold 4 reams of paper at once, if actually filled up. The trays were big enough for 11x17 paper, or 2 complete stacks (8 reams) of 8.5x11 paper...

I can already see those of you who know what I'm talking about facepalming, and shaking their heads....

"The Printer is broken" - No, somebody COMPLETELY FILLED the lower tray and now it will not pick up anything from said tray...

The sad part is, someone had the bright notion to put a single piece of paper at the bottom that said, "No paper on this side". Of course, that didn't work either.



Eric the Grey

[mattm04]

No the printer is not broken just because you printed 2 seconds ago and it hasn't come out yet. That because their, lets see, 50 pages to print before you, oh wait, you just printed you 6 page doc 8 more time to male it print. Well now they are all canceled.

[Soulstealer]

'The printer has a paper jam'
No, it doesn't it's just being a little bitch again. Open the paper slot and close it. (90% of printer problems are solved this way, another 9% by adding paper, and the rest are actual problems.)

Things coworkers need to learn the first time they were taught.

[ExiledV20]

THAT is an MFP.
And I'll bet money it's one of mine.
And I'll bet even more money that I've had to deal with one of your lusers.

[KellyHabersham]

'The printer has a paper jam'
No, it doesn't it's just being a little bitch again. Open the paper slot and close it. (90% of printer problems are solved this way, another 9% by adding paper, and the rest are actual problems.)

Things coworkers need to learn the first time they were taught.

Agreed on that one - the printer I originally had in the church office was always given the "paper jam" error message when there WAS no such jam.....happened a few times when there wasn't even paper in the printer.

[dalesys]

That's just the printer's way of saying "I've lifted my leg and can't get down!"

[Broomjockey]

- the printer I originally had in the church office was always given the "paper jam" error message when there WAS no such jam.

...

"PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?"

[Gerrinson]

One of the very last IT calls I had to deal with at my current job (less than 24 hours to go before I'm out of here!) was for the Reservations dept.

Complaint: All 5 of our computers are broken because we can't print. We could print fine until about 10 minutes ago.

Fix: Put more paper in the printer. Also, try not to be so stupid about it in the future.

Actually, I made them go look at the printer themselves. I wasn't going to walk down three stories just to find out that they were idiots, since I already knew that. Freaking end lusers.

[PixelJockey]

All 5 of our computers are broken because we can't print. We could print fine until about 10 minutes ago.

Fix: Put more paper in the printer. Also, try not to be so stupid about it in the future.

*classic* ID-10-T...

[Crawling_Chaos]

Man oh, man, this brings up so many epic calls from my current place of employment.

I work for one of the major health care providers in Buffalo, NY, and man, some of the printer calls we get are FAIL in such sad ways. So, on with the show:

"The printer is broken": No, you just have to power cycle the printer and print server like we have told you ten million times before and everything will be fine.

Oh you already did that? <checks print server IP address>

Mam, the current up time on this unit is 114 days, 10 hours, 3 minutes............

No mam we will not send out a tech to do this for you. Having your Nurse Manager yell at us will not work either, mam, as the fix is simple.

Being that you are not the ER, this is not page worthy so please stop asking as it is 11:00 PM

Being irate and curt with me mam will not get you anywhere,might we please commence with said reset procedure.......?

Its printing now? Oh good, have a good evening.............

I then proceed to scream and do a shot of scotch.....

[draggar]

1. "The printer is broken" - No its not, its out of paper

2. "The printer is broken" - Not its not its out of toner

3. "The printer is broken" - ARGHH, someone did not load the paper properly

I've actually had tickets for these where I had to drive an hour (each way) to the location. That location's supervisor got an earful from the IT department.

4. "The printer is broken" - No, someone just decided to print 145 full color pictures off his digital camera and choked up the print server.

4a. The person before you, or you, decided that it wasn't printing fast enough so you hit the print button a few dozen more times. Yes, this tells the printer that you are more important and will put your documents at the front of the queue.

6. "The printer is always down" - Hun? You guys just don't know how to USE the printer. So you sit there until I Deus Ex Machina away the stupidity.

6a. Refer to #1 and #2.

7. "The printer is broken" Wow its actually broken, wait a second............. Did you disobey the sign that said "DO NOT FIX THIS PRINTER YOURSELF CALL HELPDESK" of course you did.

7a. Did you ignore the big sign on it saying "THE PRINTER IS BROKEN - DO NOT USE"?

9. "The copier is a piece of crap, when are we going to get a new one"- Wahhhhhhh, you just abuse the hell out of that one too.

9a. Yes you will.

I once had a manager trying to print scannable bar codes. Instead of using the CONCATENATE command in Excel (used to add a * at the beginning and the end of the barcodes - making those the "beginning" and "end" markers) he decided to try using something shiny - thinking regular paper was too dull.

Hmm, what's shiny? Oh, laminating sheets! That's a great idea! Let's just load it into this $12,000 laser printer and try to print again.

Of course he denied putting it in there and tried to blame me. That didn't go over well.

[earl colby pottinger]

Or just cheap

I once had a manager trying to print scannable bar codes. Instead of using the CONCATENATE command in Excel (used to add a * at the beginning and the end of the barcodes - making those the "beginning" and "end" markers) he decided to try using something shiny - thinking regular paper was too dull.

Hmm, what's shiny? Oh, laminating sheets! That's a great idea! Let's just load it into this $12,000 laser printer and try to print again.

Of course he denied putting it in there and tried to blame me. That didn't go over well.

Related, the job where I arrive to find the fuser wrapped around with four(4) transparencies - all fused together into a solid mass. Since I never seen that before I ask for the original box so I would know in the future what brand of bad stuff to warn my customers about.

BUT!

Turns out the customer bought standard projection sheets instead of the usual photocopier transparencies they had bought in the past. They explained that accounting bought them because they were cheaper than their usual order.

I had them send me to accounting to personally explain to the order desk that saving $10 a box of transparencies does not save money once you add in the cost of a replacement fuser ($125) and travel/labour expenses ($60). And if it were not the fact that we stocked and carried HP fusers with us all the time the floor's printer would have been off-line for the rest of the day (more $$$).

Never got called there again for transparencies in the fuser.