Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Everyone makes mistakes, but only The Register celebrates them every week in "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column that shares your worst workplace moments then records how you bounced back. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Louis" who told us he once managed the IT operations at a leasing company. "We made a …

[Pascal Monett]

"we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

As usual, it takes a disaster for proper rules to be implemented.

Or, said in a nicer way, one learns from one's failures.

[UCAP]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Far better to make a mistake and learn the appropriate lessons, than to make the same mistake and never learn anything at all. Too many people I've dealt with over the years fall into the latter category.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

The good engineer learns from his or her mistakes.

The great engineer learns from those of other people, to save making them themself.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I used to, when giving advice to younger engineers, append the phrase "Guess how I know this?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

My workplace is amidst a blind reorganization by idiots, recreating organizational structure nationally, reassigning people to roles vs. regions, blowing all that institutional knowledge within the regions to the wind. I used to selectively dole out tools and instruction with warnings and caveats like that, however, my new mantra is: "Good luck, we're all counting on you." as I hand them a hammer. Did I mention peanut butter and morale? Don't let the door hit you on butt on the way out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Looks like you picked the wrong week to give up smoking...

[J.G.Harston]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Use another engineer's tools? That's like wearing their underpants!

I often do IT site visits and so am often on my own with my own tools. On one project I was doing an office installation in a team. None of the others had brought any tools and were constantly pestering to borrow mine, but I stuck to the disassembly and assembly bits that needed tool usage. On the second day they AGAIN hadn't brought any tools, and gave in to the perstering and let others use some of my tools. One of the idiots completely stripped my box spanner, whereupon I gathered all my tools together and strode off site*, emailed the project desk and told them I refused to complete the week.

*Slightly less impressive by having to stride angrily to the floor desk to get an escort through the security doors and stride angrily to the sign-in desk to hand my visitor's pass in and sign out.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Tell that to a REAL engineer. One of my sons has just completed his 8 year apprenticeship in a company that does maintenance work on steam locomotives for heritage railways (he could be briefly seen on a TV documentary last year behind Guy Martin who was learning how to rivet the chimney for the Locomotive No.1 replica that was reconditioned for the celebrations of the first commercial railway). Now that his apprenticeship is over, he can call himself a real engineer.

The 'workshop' tools have all seen better days, so he is accumulating his own set, one tool at a time as he needs them, like many of the other workers there. One of his Christmas present this year was a high quality 3/4" drive telescopic ratchet worth more that most of my tools combined, required for undoing nuts and bolts that were made 80 years ago, and probably not undone at any time in the last 25 years or more. This to go with the pro grade Whitworth sockets I bought for him the previous year.

He has to lock his tool boxes up so that his colleagues do not borrow his shiny new tools because they are in better condition than the workshop ones!

[Kimo]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Dad had a set of tools sprayed neon yellow on one side. The guys at the steel mill each had a pegboard for their tools and each used a different bright color to spay the board with all their tools in place. Not only did they stand out against the grimy equipment in the mill, but they could also tell if somebody walked off with another person's tool and/or if there was a tool missing as it left a void on the board. And it was not good to be caught using a tool that was not your color.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Spay? I guess the boards didn't have nuts.

[Not Yb]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

That, and "Most safety rules were written in blood."

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Indeed. About 40 years ago, I arrived at work one day to see an ambulance parked outside the never opened outside access doors of the machine room.

Turns out a Xerox engineer servicing our enterprise class 4050 laser printer (a big brute before high page count desktop laser printers) had got a finger caught in a chain drive, which resulted in a messy amputation. My guess was that he had defeated the cover switches, and kept his hand too close to the working bits while he was trying to see what was not working properly. I will bet that there were notes reinforcing the safety procedures after that.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

The average engineers learn from their mistakes. So they'll recognize them when they make them again.

[JulieM]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

If I had a pound for every time I've appended "Don't ask me how I know this" to a piece of advice I've given, I wouldn't be in this God-forsaken office .....

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Even without the rule in place, I would be very suspicious if someone in an office environment asked me for pliers, or other tools (soldering irons spring to mind). I would definitely want to know what they were up to before I allow their grubby little hands to touch MY tools.

But then maybe I am paranoid

Or just experienced

[blu3b3rry]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

We had a very expensive electrical tester go missing when an intern "borrowed" it, and the bespoke/custom test leads it had been stored with got scattered all over the area he was working in. Gave him a day or so to bring it all back and it didn't reappear. I found him the following morning and had a very stern but quiet word. Think it was pretty clear I was pissed off.

I don't like having to confront people, but probably better off dealing with me than some of the others. At a previous workplace a similar transgression by an intern led to the workshop foreman chasing him across the building wielding a hammer, so he probably got off rather lightly!

Equally I'm rather impressed that someone in marketing actually knew what a pair of pliers was. Much like a software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver, that should have set off alarm bells all on its own.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

First thought "who is he/she going shove said screwdriver into ?"

Depending on the conclusion I might well be quite happy to lend one of the cheap sacrificial ones from the pound shop. "Blade or Philips ?"

Although as a precaution against the rare dev that possess a (dangerously) little knowledge of hardware, I might have previously replaced the access screws on anything important with torx.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

Flathead, Philips, torx... too many tools. This dev keeps it simple by packing a compact angle grinder :D

PS. Flathead sounds a little less criminally inciteful, plausible deniability "Who, Me?" style ;)

[Red Ted]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

... and a set of flathead screwdrivers in a range of sizes will undo torx (or robertsons) as they fit across the diagonal of the hole.

Don't ask me how I know, I just know, ok?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

Which is why the really clever use tamper-resistant Torx. (The kind with the bump in the middle.)

And yes, I have a set of bits for them - one set at work, another at home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

My challenge is not so much finding the fancy bits that unlock all sorts of wonderful screwhead patterns but finding screws that match them.

I have some truly wonderful bits that I would love to see the screws for, but I'm guessing it'll take a day of AliExpress digging before I find them..

[zapgadget]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

Oh finding the wierd screws is easy. Just volunteer at your local repair café. You'll soon meet an incredible variety of so-called 'tamper-resistant' screws - as you undo them. "Why yes, we do have 4 sizes of triangular screwdriver, why do you ask?'

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

iFixit are your people for those kind of things. They make some very nice sets.

This one is similar to the one I have, just the small pocket set for "useful" hobby jobs.

It gets both a lot of use and a lot of comments about the weird shapes of some of the bits, and they make some much larger/more varied sets with even stranger bits.

Oh and the lid is held on magnetically, and doubles up as a very nice and retentive place to keep the screws you remove, to stop them from wandering off and exploring the floor.

[MrBanana]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

Toasters and coffee machines - what a pain. A reverse Torx bolt, so you need a set of Torx sockets, and a strange oval headed bolt that you absolutely need the specialised bit for when recessed in a deep socket.

[midgepad]

Secure Torx

Having to use a small screwdriver to break those pins off is a nuisance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Secure Torx

I have a solution. Use the correct bit.

[Paul Cooper]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

I have several ratchet screwdrivers with replaceable bits. Most have every bit under the sun included in the set. They are cheap and widely available. They aren't the best tools around, but using unusual screws is not going to work when tools like that are easily and cheaply available.

[herman]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

I have a flat screw driver with notch in the middle for that problem

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver

Reminds me of the trade school instructor who made a point of grilling his students on the proper name and application of each tool.

One day, a student walked up to the tool room window and said to the attendant, "Give me a wrench."

The instructor, standing nearby, interjected, "What KIND of wrench?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter. I'm going to use it as a hammer."

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

"Equally I'm rather impressed that someone in marketing actually knew what a pair of pliers was. Much like a software dev asking to borrow a screwdriver, that should have set off alarm bells all on its own."

Kids today!

Time was when we did everything.

Goes off mumbling into grey white beard.

[MrBanana]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

"Goes off mumbling into grey white beard."

I've gone from black, to distinguished, peppered, grey, white, and I'm now at filthy.

[goblinski]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

...Equally I'm rather impressed that someone in marketing actually knew what a pair of pliers was...

No guarantee.

It's all IT's fault. If they had given the guy a duster brush when he asked for pliers, he'd have gone along with it and we wouldn't have a story other than a very dustless printer.

It's like when I ask my wife for bacon. She turns into a Nutrimatic Bacon Dispenser.

[Martin an gof]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

...definitely want to know what they were up to before...

And the number of times when someone has come in asking to borrow tool x but when you ask them what for and finally drag a cogent explanation out of them, it transpires that actually they need tool y but didn't know that! The logical conclusion of this is that the person wanting to borrow the tool isn't actually competent to carry out the operation they are intending to because if they were, they would have known which tool to use, all of which then means I often then have to down my own tools and go and do their job for them because it's quicker than waiting for them to come back with the now-broken item and having to do a lot of unnecessary repairs.

M.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

> ... the person wanting to borrow the tool isn't actually competent to carry out the operation they are intending to because if they were, they would have known which tool to use

Indeed!

A mate of mine worked in a tool hire outfit, open to public and trade. Theoretically they hired out chainsaws, "theoretically" because in the years he worked there never once was one hired out. Member of the public, "I'd like to hire a chainsaw please." Hire guy, "What's it for?". Punter, "I need to trim a privet bush." "Here, try these sheers..."

I suppose the theory was that a pro tree surgeon might need one one day, but if they couldn't repair their own after a bit of a bork, they certainly would have access to a few more anyway.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

*shears -->

[Ididntbringacoat]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

*shears -->

Shearly you jest

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

"a pro tree surgeon might need one one day"

So might a dendrochronologist.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

True enough, but now all I can picture is Mick the Twig going to a fancy dress party as the Doom Slayer!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

" Now living on the US East of Coast, ... dating many of the oldest buildings in the country with pinpoint accuracy."

"Oldest buildings" or, as we say, "recent".

The Belfast dendro project was inspired by piles of bog oak drag-lines out of bogs when the NI M1 was built. Bog-hardened and sun-dried they were no fun to cut with a blunt Bushman saw. A chainsaw was an early acquisition.

We were offered the chance to whack the end off a floor joist that had been exposed when some work was done in Trinity College Dublin Library. Sadly, you can't use a chainsaw in a library so it was back to the Bushman.

In retrospect starting a project like that and expecting to get back from modern to those bog oaks was sheer bravado but Mike Baillie made it work. RIP, Mike.

[An_Old_Dog]

"You Can't Use a Chainsaw in a Library"

Of course you can! I once used a chainsaw inside a church heing renovated into a playhouse (live theatre).

If you're worried about noise and smell, use an electric chainsaw. :-)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "You Can't Use a Chainsaw in a Library"

I have an electric chainsaw. It's far from being library quiet.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I did rent a chainsaw once to cut down a tree. Bonus marks for the hire shop that lifted a holdall of safety gear onto the table and said "you are also hiring this".

Not being a complete numpty, i carefully examined all of the kit (gauntlets, chaps etc) and looked like a complete prune wearing it all whilst I did the job. The tree was felled onto the road, well away from our house!

[NXM]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Chainsaws are one of the most dangerous tools you can lend a numpty. We lent one to someone who, it turned out, didn't know what the chain tensioner was for. The chain ended up broken and embedded in a nearby tree. Good job it wasn't a person.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

numpty are people - at least according to all this woke nonsense

[Bill Gray]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Must confess to a few moments of numpty-hood myself, and consider myself to be a person. Guess I'm "woke".

[Korev]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

import numpty as np

The IT angle

[JT_3K]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

And now I'm intrigued as to where socially-acceptable converges with profit-margins and what would happen in such a scenario. Would the tool be deemed a write off and specialist disposed, or would it have a new chain fitted, be cleaned and re-hired with the team secretly referring to it as the "death chainsaw".

Did you have a serious injury workflow pertaining to the future of the tools? Say a gravel compactor that took a few toes from an idiot without steel toecaps, or a plasterboard lift that may have been used improperly and concussed someone?

[J.G.Harston]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I've never used a chainsaw and never intended to, but I've cut down a small handful of trees in my time. I did one about 15 years ago and halfway through realised - ubggre, I've trimmed all the lower branches off and there's nothing to hold onto to get to to the top. It looked like those Lorax trees.

[tiggity]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

@Pickle Rick

I have my own chainsaw for garden jobs, as we have a fair number of trees that sometimes need work & am getting older and manually sawing trunks / massive branches has lost any allure it may have once had - my chainsaw is electric (mains powered, not battery).

So could envisage a scenario where I may need to hire a "petrol" chainsaw as rain made use of my electric chainsaw unsafe* (e.g. emergency scenario where tree had come down due to wind & needed slicing and dicing ASAP as was blocking access road)

* not going to risk it in the rain ! My major pruning / felling** jobs are planned ahead and so no hassle waiting for a dry day.

** One felling job provisionally pencilled in, tree was wind damaged and now at a bit of an angle, so reduced crown a lot (height and density), if tree remains as it is then a reprieve, but if leans over any further then it gets felled (though everyone is aware to give it a wide berth just to be safe) - if it did blow over it would fall in garden & not damage house or anything so not a priority & like to give the more mature trees (great for wildlife) as much of a chance as possible as not replaceable to that size in my lifetime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

.. which is why it is always worth portraying yourself as incompetent. A kind of subversive outsourcing of labour.

:)

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

"which is why it is always worth portraying yourself as incompetent."

Known as weaponised incompetence in these parts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Both are equally valid ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

The one comes from the other.

[Terry 6]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

More to the point; be alert for anomalies. If a marketing type wants pliers it ought to be an automatic response to wonder--and ask-- why?

Because there are only two acceptable answers, draw them or photograph them. No use of pliers for any other purpose could be expected.

So any other reason would be suspicious.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

You know, even marketing people have lives outside of work, which may involve things like car maintenance.

And there was a time when even academic leaning schools had wood and metal working on the curriculum, so anybody coming out of school before I guess about 1980 would have come across basic tools and their use. At my senior school, I learned how to safely use a lathe, milling machine, mechanical saws, pillar drills, as well as most hand tools. And I was never going to go into a profession that would need them.

So, I never really used the skills with powered workshop tools in my work life much beyond drills and handheld tools, but I do know how to use hand tools in non-work related endeavours (but I hasten to add, I am not a marketing person).

[Terry 6]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

, which may involve things like car maintenance.

Of course, and I've heard many a request to borrow stuff for such purposes.

And I think in every single case the borrowers would be falling over themselves to say why.

As I "Can I borrow your pliers, I'm swapping the battery......etc"

[Steve Hersey]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Paranoid - or just experienced.

There's a difference?

[Caver_Dave]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I had a note on my desk at a previous company to say that I was willing to lend out tools, but only if the signature in my loan book was made in the borrowers blood!

I also only left one pen on my desk surface, a genuine "Bic" that had been used until all the ink had run out i.e. both parts of the pen body were translucent.

[Mishak]

"Borrowing"

I used to work in a place where one of the other engineers regularly lost his own tools and thought it was perfectly acceptable to "borrow" someone else's and label them with his own name...

He also failed to understand the concept of "in use".

One day I was working under a bench with the tools I needed on top so I could grab them as needed - put my hand up to get the tool, but couldn't reach it. Popped my head out to see this guy wandering off it.

Another time, I was running a test which involved writing test results down in a log book every thirty seconds. After writing an entry, I lookup up at the display to get the next reading to see that the values had all dropped to zero. Looking further to see what had gone wrong, I saw him wandering off with the instrumentation that was obviously in use - 1 hour of testing ruined.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "Borrowing"

Was the guy "wandering off" with a modified cadence (in both senses of the word)? Perhaps with a tear in his eye?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Borrowing"

I have worked in some places where that would result in the relevant tool indeed being donated by means of making it a permanent fixture until surgically removed.

[Shred]

Re: "Borrowing"

I started off as an electronics technician. It was impressed upon me that:

a) tradesmen are given a tool allowance and must buy and maintain their own tools

b) getting caught using someone else's tools without permission is on the spot dismissal.

Without a), tools get abused, broken, lost, left inside equipment etc etc.

Without b) nobody gets any work done, because they spend all day going around in circles trying to find their tools.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: "Borrowing"

In car repair (in the UK at least) no allowance is given to mechanics for tool purchases, it's just a cost of doing business for the individual, & decent mechanics handtools are eyewateringly expensive.

I've been told that in mainland Europe the tools belong to the garages, but have never been able to verify this.

[HXO]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

IT people as well.

Having an engineering background where tool use are the norm, so comming to IT I assumed all technical people could use at least handtools like screwdrivers, wrenches, sockets, multimeters... I learned I was wrong, and that some IT peoples hardware skills came from maybe changing the ribbon in a type writer. Personal toolbag for me from then on.

I have joked that 'tool intelligence' is missing from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

[The Indomitable Gall]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

The other notable thing missing from the Multiple Intelligence Theory is intelligence, cos it's all nonsense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Maybe it's a combination of Bodily-kinesthetic and Visual-spatial?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I'm amazed by how many IT tech's don't carry a DVM (Or a barcode scanner) in their tool kits. I had a rather nice little "credit card pocket sized" unit from Radio Shack (Clearance item too) until the unhappy day when I destroyed the screen.

*The link is the closest thing I can find resembling it - https://images.toolbuy.com/resources/images/productzoom/product010425120218PMpm3-v2.jpg

[tiggity]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

@The Oncoming Scorn

Most IT techs these days at least do carry a barcode scanner - their phone!

[Pete Sdev]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Lending the ethernet diagnostic tool out is however to be encouraged.

Icon -> BOFH

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Oh, no!! You just know they will plug the RJ-45 EthernetKiller into the wall jack and zorch your expensive Cisco Catalyst Ethernet Switch!

[Terje]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I fail to see the problem with this. If they do you get to replace that out of support piece of trash with something good and supported.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Every regulation is written in blood. Or, in this case, printer oil.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

My granddaughter brought home a paper from school (1st grade):

"Mistakes help me learn"

All her adults immediately wanted a copy to take to the office.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Speaking as a failed spanner twirler, we learned a long time ago never to loan out tools or equipment to those without the qualifications needed to use said tools. partly because said borrower would more than likely wreck them and forget to return them , but most likely , would wreck whatever they were attempting to fix and leave our tools nearby so that us engineers would get the blame for wrecking said equipment.

Although sometimes, the more dangerous the item wanted to be borrowed, the more likely we were to let the unskilled use it.........

[GlenP]

Users and printing devices...

I say devices as it's not just actual printers!

The usual one with a paper jam in the output was for them to merrily tear off the stub of paper without using the pressure release leaver, leaving me to have to half dismantle the machine to get to the remainder.

Two from a company I worked for many years ago that had a cost saving fanatic of an FD (if you've ever seen the Dilbert cartoon on trying to get a new pencil that's what she was like, you genuinely had to provide your empty biro before she'd issue a new one). The first one was putting part-used label sheets back in the laser printer, on one occasion I did manage to unpeel the label that had wrapped around the drum and clean the residue off. She also insisted on using scrap paper in the fax machine on the grounds that the back was still blank (fair enough until someone didn't check the front and used an invoice copy as packing material to send something to a customer); one user thought that as there was only a little bit of printing on a sheet she could safely Tippex* it out and put the paper straight in the machine - the drum didn't survive the experience, the £100 or so bill wiped out any cost savings that would ever have been made.

*WhiteOut, Snowpake or Liquid Paper for those not familiar with the brand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

For those sort of fanatical bean counters, you need someone who has the ear of the managaing director/CEO/etc. Then you simply point out the time taken for an engineer/dev/non-minimum wage serf to go and visit the bean counter. Multiply that by their billable rate, and multiply it again by the number of engineers/devs/non-minimum wage serfs. Whatever number pops up will undoubtedly be significantly higher than the stationary expenditure of people grabbing their own Pens (even if they take, God forbid, 2 pens at the same time! *shock horror*).

Admittedly, that only works if you have someone who can have a quiet word with the CEO. And the CEO isnt shagging the FD. But those are tales for another time...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I suppose that they had a stationary cupboard - stationary because the contents weren't going anywhere.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: Users and printing devices...

> stationary cupboard

Is that like an inert cabinet? Now where would I find one of those...?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Clara Oswin: When you say mobile phone, why do you point at that blue box?

The Doctor: Because it's a surprisingly accurate description.

[Aglex]

Re: Users and printing devices...

We've got one where we store our bottles of Argon..

[collinsl]

Re: Users and printing devices...

"Stores are for storing, otherwise they'd be called issues" - ancient British Army joke

[David Harper 1]

Re: Users and printing devices...

My tale is from the early 1990s, before PowerPoint was invented to bring joy into our lives, and presentations were done using acetate sheets on an overhead projector (kids, go ask your grandparents).

Our department's very expensive photocopier was rendered unusable when someone fed regular acetate sheets through it instead of the special heat-resistant ones. The sheets simply melted onto the drum. The perpetrator had fled the scene, but he had left the originals of his slides in the machine, so the departmental administrator was able to identify him and deliver an appropriate bollocking.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Users and printing devices...

The heat-resistant ones were acetate, the cheap ones were PVC or similar. The latter melt (or soften) in the fuser and lose the rigidity to push themselves out of the machine. Bonus points for the user how immediately after realising one ent in and didn't come out - then switches the printer off and leaves it long enough to cool before they call you. Then there's a sort of transparent chocolate flake things firmly stuck in the fuser.

[Terry 6]

Re: Users and printing devices...

To be honest I've done that myself. To my own office machine.

I just hadn't realised there were two types of acetate

[Martin an gof]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I've definitely suffered all of those, the re-use of labels one with an early(ish) Tektronix Phaser printer, which was never quite the same after I'd peeled the labels off. Fair enough in some ways; she was an office temp and had probably never used anything more up-to-date than a daisy wheel printer and of course, as a temp, no-one thought that maybe she would need to be given any kind of induction to the company.

As for the Phaser, the printer in the OA sounds like it's meant to be a Phaser ("large blocks of crayon") but neither that Tektronix model, nor the much later Xerox model I used at home for many years, had any kind of oil reservoir. Sure, they would not have taken kindly to being tipped upside down while operating, but spilling oil? Maybe a tiny dribble of liquid wax from the small reservoirs. Perhaps this was a different beast.

M.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Are you sure about that Martin?

I'm fairly certain that at least some of the the Phasers had an oil reservoir of some sort because there was a wiper blade that smeared a thin coating over the drum before the melted wax crayon was put on in so that it slid off onto the paper properly? It's been a while since I've worked on them, but there was a very small oil reservoir replaced as part of the maintenance kit, my service manuals would suggest?

We were always warned not to tip them because of the molten wax rather than the oil - having seen the results when a colleague moved a hot printer, I can see why - ink all over the print surface, effectively wrote the machine off!

ETA: I've just remembered there was another colour laster printer I was once exposed to which did, indeed have an oil reservoir in - I remember it being an evil, evil thing. The school I was working at bought it second-hand in around 2001, and it was a damned nuisance. Minolta, perhaps? It was an absolute sod, and needed something done damned near every day to keep it going, and the quality was - questionable - at best.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Those two machines I mentioned, I can't be absolutely certain the first one had no oil, but I did some first-line maintenance with it and do not recall ever having to check oil. Then again, it was mid 1990s, and a lot of life has happened since then!

The machine we had at home for about 12 years? No, absolutely no oil. Maintenance (apart from topping up the crayons) was a waste tray that collected ink dribbles (only needed replacing if it actually broke as it could be easily emptied) and a cartridge with some kind of woven paper material (like nappy liner) on a roll which was used (I think) to wipe excess ink from the nozzles. I suppose that material might have been very lightly lubricated, but didn't seem that way when you were swapping it out. The drum was scraped with a squeegee affair. Never had to replace that, but I ended up getting rid of the printer when it needed a new drum (life expired, not actually failing) and I worked out that the cost of the drum kit alone (which might well have included a new squeegee and other bits) was about the same as a new, faster, colour laser which came with toner equivalent to a complete set of new crayons, and of course I needed crayons for the Phaser too.

That laser printer is (erm, finding it difficult to remember) maybe seven years old by now and every time I have to buy toner it grates that the cost of a complete set of (original) toner is about the same as the cost of a brand new printer. The one thing stopping me adding to the needless e-waste problem is the fact that my current printer has a 550-sheet paper tray and last time I looked, nothing currently on offer in the same price bracket had more than a 250 sheet tray.

Tell you what, though. I do miss the slightly raised print from the Phaser. It gave a certain "high class" look and feel to everything you printed, especially on card stock. Its rendering of photographs was not quite as good as the laser, but for text and graphics, hands-down the best printer I've ever used.

M.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I know what you mean about the quality of those Phasers (Deployed a few at GSK (Stevenage)), I got a sort of building block kick out of putting the wax blocks into their correct shaped slots & that waxy smell as they heated up. I did come across quite a few of the wax blocks at a local auction for $1 each. I tried selling them for half retail no buyers, but my lockup got broken into & the insurance paid out full retail value.

I bought a few Staples specials\clearance colour lasers in Canada & e-wasting them (To a Thrift Store*) as they were cheaper than buying new toner.

Canadian Food Inspectors wanted to throw out a high mileage Brother MFC, I grabbed it as one of my specials languishing in the basement was the base model. I spent a happy (Rainy) Sunday afternoon swapping out parts\consumables with ones that had barely done 800 pages before the starter packs of toner ran out. I then refilled or bought compatible toners. Sadly one of the things I lost in the divorce.

I actually found a basic laser & scanner printer in a Thrift Store once for about $25 (It might even have been $10 thinking back) it looked new, looked at the serial number label for year of manufacture & checked the model against Amazon, when I got it home & had it powered it up it had printed about 25 pages & scanned 100 items. Sold it a couple years later for about $100.

[NXM]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Rob Dalglish, I had one of those Minolta Colormasters. It was enormous, heavy, had an oil reservoir for no reason I could see, and it made rubbish prints.

[RMclan]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Speaking of heavy printers, back in the late 90's we had an HP Color Laserjet 4500DN printer that weighed something like 75kg. It came boxed on a pallet (that we had to keep in case the printer needed to be sent back any time in the 3 year warranty). The printer had 4 toner cartridges (CYMK), an imaging unit and a drum unit and you only had to look at it wrong for even basic 80gsm white A4 paper to jam it up. I wouldn't have dared try to feed anything exotic through that beast.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I quite liked those, (That drum rotation was a bitch, fairly easy to jam, but fortunately not impossible to unjam).

I did get one weird error with those though (GSK Dartford), an error code would pop up & I'd go down to fix it & find the exact same fault every time - The tiny corner of a sheet of A4 "torn off" at exactly the same shape\size as previous visits & sitting in the exact same place between the front drawer mating connectors. No indication of where the rest of the paper sheet was.

Icon - Never the same printer, different buildings & staff.

[Richard Pennington 1]

Re: Users and printing devices...

If it had an oil reservoir, did it also have a dipstick?

Apart, that is, from the incompetent user?

I'll take my oil-resistant overall.

[herman]

Re: Users and printing devices...

The 'conductive oil' that 'shorted it out' is more of z problem to me. Oil running about sure would mess things up though.

[SVD_NL]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Those partially used label sheets haunt me in my dreams... It works just fine until it doesn't, and when it goes bad, it goes very, very bad.

[Christoph]

Re: Users and printing devices...

The boss insisted we reused old print-outs in the laser printer by printing on the back. This was a false economy anyway as it often didn't work and you had to print again - the extra toner cost more than the paper you saved.

I'm not sure what eventually happened but I suspect someone re-used a sheet of paper that had a staple in it. The replacement drum cost far more than any saving.

[GlenP]

Re: Users and printing devices...

had a staple in it

You've just reminded me of another one, at my current employer. A £1,500 autofeed HP scanner (originally part of a document management system costing several £1,000s that had mysteriously disappeared before I arrived) where the feed mechanism was wrecked by a staple. It simply wasn't worth the cost of repairing or replacing the feeder as MFDs were starting to come in by then.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I spent a few years as a warranty certified repair tech for a number of printers, and staples and drawing pins were par for the course. Sellotape round the rollers of a document feeder on an MFP was good, but not as much fun to remove as the blu-tac which one user didn't remove before putting their sheets into the printer.

All, of course, while swearing to the hell-desk that they hadn't put anything other than paper in it.

Users...

[RMclan]

Re: Users and printing devices...

How about the FD who didn't understand there was a differenc between inkjet labels and laser labels? Bought 500 sheets of inkjet labels because they were cheaper and managed to destroy the developer unit in our colour photocopier/printer/scanner when the labels got stuck to the fuser roller, about £140 for a new unit. We ended up binning all the rest of the labels as well as we didn't actually have any inkjet printers anywhere in the company.

Back in the day when overhead projectors were a thing, I've seen musltiple cases where people bought the wrong transparencies because they were cheaper, and melt them inside laser printers while trying to print on them.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I had to try and explain the concept of the overhead projector to the younglings

One needed to make a transparent alignment jig, so I suggested getting some laser OHP film and printing it.

Blank look

Just make sure you get the laser printer safe stuff

Blank look

For an Overhead projector

Continued blank look

Showed them a picture

Enlightenment dawns, "so you used these in school before computers were invented ?"

[JT_3K]

Re: Users and printing devices...

We had similar at the end of November. $Department demanded an MFP because they thrashed their on-desk laser with labels as it got too hot, and they knew labels went through the upstairs MFP. A good-used low-throughput one spent three weeks being re-commissioned at the supplier before being delivered. Supplier is great and believes hard that their at-cost parts are cheaper for a full replacement than the engineer time/effort onsite and lost goodwill. Supplier carefully delivered, then took great pains to explain to $Department that labels had to be fed strictly from the side tray as that was a shorter path that didn't expose to heat for long enough melt the glue on the labels before spitting them out.

One proud-semi-technophobe decided as he'd put a sheet through from the drawer before being corrected and it'd worked, he'd just carry on because he thought it was easier than having to understand how to print from a tray. His first tray sheet however had been in a cold printer. His fifth sheet was not. The entire sheet peeled off in turn stuck around the fuser, the transfer belt, every transfer roller/wheel and all the toners. It did a few more before he figured something was wrong.

The printer was with us three days before it needed a full reconditioning.

[J. Cook]

Re: Users and printing devices...

similar, but with "iron on" style t-shirt paper intended for inkjet printers getting fed into a brand-new, 'installed the day before' color laser printer. I had the fun chore of carefully unwrapping a half-melted page from around the fuser assembly, because there was no way this would have been a warranty call.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Tippex...WhiteOut, Snowpake or Liquid Paper

[once?] marketed as Twink in New Zealand for which Kiwis raise a few eyebrows in AU when they use "twink" as a verb.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/correction_fluid

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Tippex...WhiteOut, Snowpake or Liquid Paper

>in AU when they use "twink" as a verb.

Over here Twink is a noun, a young cute noun

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I once watched a civil engineer attempt to clear a jammed multifunction business printer by jamming a metal metre ruler right up its guts, destroying one of the drums in the process.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

>a civil engineer attempt to clear a jammed multifunction business printer by jamming a metal metre ruler right up its guts,

Was it a metric printer ?

Probably a railway civil engineer, they use chains.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Users and printing devices...

One genius decided in the early-mid 1990s that the department spent too much on printer/photocopy paper and decreed that students were to provide their own paper for the common use Apple Laserwriters.

Of course the number of paper jams skyrocketed.

The prize for the most imaginative went to the student that tried using onionskin (25·39 gm paper) which was then typically used with typewriters for the carbons, or for airmail letters (where postage was by weight.)

In the event it wasn't too hard to remove as any organic component appeared to have been vaporised leaving a mineral shell that hadn't adhered to the rollers etc and could be cleanly lifted away.

During an absence someone had seriously screwed a Laserwriter and I found on my return the paper policy had been rescinded.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: Users and printing devices...

> ...the paper policy had been rescinded.

They realised the policy wasn't worth the pap... er... >shakes head and walks away<

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Users and printing devices...

WAAAAAY back in the day, the Engineering department at university had one of those desk size flatbed Xerox (yes, it was that brand) machines with a slot for the "counter key"...an odometer-like device with six pins that needed to be inserted before the machine would make copies. Annoying, you had to go, cap in hand, to the department secretary and ask for the key. Depending on her mood, you might or might not get it.

I was browsing one of the electronics magazines (yes, this was a while ago) and noticed that one of the surplus places had the key counters for sale at a very reasonable price. So I ordered a couple.

A week or two later, I waited until no one was around, and tried the keys I'd bought in the machine. Sad trombone...neither worked. So, I went up to the lab, procured a multimeter, and measured the resistance between the six pins. Sure enough, a couple of them were shorted together. Then, I went and borrowed the official key, and measured its six pins. Different pair shorted. Returned the genuine key, after making a note of which pins were connected, then proceeded to dig the epoxy out of the screws in the case of one of my purchased keys. A bit of fiddling with the soldering iron and I had what I hoped was a duplicate key...which worked just fine when I tested it in the machine!

Of course, the statute of limitations (as well as counter keys) has long since expired. And I never misused my bounty...but it sure was a timesaver when I needed a quick copy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

These days that would make you a domestic terrorist for violating anti-circumvention methods

[gnasher729]

Re: Users and printing devices...

About this pencil problem: At one company we just calculated that getting a fresh pen was cheaper than searching for your old one for 55 seconds.

So I’d say your office Cerberus was very bad at maths.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Beancounters know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

One workplace "saved money" on the cleaners by having all staff empty their own trashcans into the big ones in the hall.

$100k/year engineers emptying trash cans is a bit more expensive than $15/hour cleaners...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

.. which is the reason they're now hiring much cheaper engineers just out of school..

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Also standard at any university where they "cut waste" by "reducing administrative overhead".

Result, professor spending a day photocopying and sorting 12 sets of grant applications or trying to work out how to do customs paperwork for shipping a sample to an apparently advanced country with customs rules based on The Silmarillion meets Lovecraft

[Terry 6]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Not just university.

This applies through public service; schools, hospitals, police stations. Pretty much everywhere.

Politicians equate " efficiency savings" with cutting administrators, not administration.So the academics, teachers,nurses, doctors, constables etc etc spend time filing reports, two finger typing slowly, when the should be doing a professional job.There will always be some admin, (work notes do need to be recorded) but it makes no sense to give front line staff backroom work if avoidable.

[Terry 6]

Re: Users and printing devices...

And I dare say telling your engineers they're glorified rubbish collectors probably doesn't do much for retention.

[herman]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Nothing can be very valuable - no pollution - no noise - no distractions...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Nice catch. I have to admit something like that passed though my mind as I typed it.

No idea why you got a down vote.

[herman]

Re: Users and printing devices...

My posts always get a down vote. Someone like me so much that he/she/it honoured me by writing a script to do that.

[ChrisC]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I'd say they were just very good at minimising expenditure on any cost codes they had responsibility for. Who cares if it costs the company overall more, so long as you can truthfully state that your department didn't overspend...

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Yes, any device. When I was a student, working in a coffee shop for beer money, we got a paper jam in the till on busy Sunday morning. The whole till locked up, and neither of us had the key for manual drawer release.[1] My co-worker was spending as much time as possible digging it out with a pocket knife and even removing bits to *find* the fscking thing, while also trying to keep coffee brewing and other things running. I had to pull out a pad of paper for scribbling down every purchase, dump the tip jar onto a spare bit of counter, and use the contents thereof to make change for people while also making drinks/dealing with customers. Because there were only two of us and no one could focus on clearing the jam exclusively, it took at *least* 90 minutes to get the jam cleared and the till up and working again.[3]

To this day, even a "normal" paper jam fills me with anxiety and dread.

[1] I suppose that since the owner was at that store 6 days a week, he didn't think anyone else would need one.

[2] There were normally three, including the owner who actually *did* work as hard as he expected his minions to.

[3] And then we had the "fun" of punching all the sales in and sorting the shop's money from what we used out of pocket for making change. The task of actually handling the money fell upon me, and I was in that transitional state between "still drunk from a late Saturday night" to "hungover as hell" at that point.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Users and printing devices...

At least you had the nous to continue doing transactions with a manual paper record. Kids today would throw up their hands with incompetence.

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I've always been pretty terrible at sums, it was more of a matter of quick thinking to figure out a way of doing it. To make it easier, I just wrote down any specific product once the first person ordered one, and added tally marks to its side any time someone got another. I'm legitimately surprised that the count at the end was off less than $2.

I think what really messes "the kids" up is that they've never had to do so many of the things that older generations (including the older half of millennials) had to fight with. They could always just push a button and they'd be online (if it doesn't just connect automagically), and never had to deal with installing all the networking stuff onto Windows 3.1 (or whatever, memory is fuzzy) and troubleshooting it. Even most Linux users these days don't have to fuss with drivers unless it's for some esoteric hardware. Last time I had to was because the Nvidia blob didn't like the bleeding edge kernel I was using. And since hardware isn't designed to really be user-servicable, people don't learn how to fix that stuff.

The same phenomenon occurs across generations with those who have always had someone else deal with that stuff. I used to be really salty about all these people who seem to be utterly unable to do basic things having way more money than I do. Then it dawned on me that they always had someone else to deal with that thing; they haven't been forced to learn. And the one rather younger friend I have who *is* good at problem solving any situation grew up in a trailer park. She never had the luxury growing up to have someone else do it, or just buy a new one and was forced to learn.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Not exactly your trailer park situation but anyone growing up in the household of a skilled craftsman will probably be familiar with the notion of not buying something you can make yourself. Even today I have to steel myself to buy anything other than basic supplies irrespective of not being able to make it myself.

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I only mentioned the trailer park as an example of having to learn through necessity, and it also being a sort of situation where most of the people around would have some level of craft/repair skills. Some of the most cherished toys I had as a kid were made by my grandfather who did carpentry as a hobby. The rocking horse swing, little wagon + toy chest, and such. My father did that sort of thing as well for at least the earlier years of my life. It's definitely easier to look at something as either "fixable or makeable" when there's someone around who already has the ability to do so and teach that kind of thinking.

It doesn't help that almost everything these days seems designed to be disposable. Almost impossible to do most of your own work on a modern car, for example, even if they were teaching auto shop in school or someone nearby did it at home. One reason the "right to repair" movement, and the states and countries legislating it are so important. Not just so people can save money and reduce waste/resource consumption, but just to be able to learn how to do it. Both my G4 and G5 Mac towers didn't even need tools to open the case, there was a convenient lever. The G5 I could easily replace fans, add disks, and do a fair bit of servicing with a single screwdriver at most in terms of tools. The iMac, not a chance of even getting that thing open with just what I have laying around. Even my Thinkpad isn't designed to be serviced by the user.[1] I've been fortunate that thus far, the last hardware failure I've had before it was getting time to replace the thing anyway was a PCI SCSI controller on the G4. I certainly don't have the tools to service most of my devices, and I really don't like it. But we're also living in a world where most people have no opportunity or necessity to even learn, and necessity especially is a very good teacher.

[1] A couple of years ago, I had a panic when I thought that the charging port was busted, but apparently it was a dud charger.[2] I still tried taking it in to local repair places and none would touch it. The charging port is soldered on, and I was repeatedly told that I'd have to send it in to Lenovo to get that fixed.

[2] I think I'm currently on charger #5 after maybe 3 years. Except for the one that snapped when the cord got kicked, the others just died silently.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Users and printing devices...

> I've always been pretty terrible at sums

For years my wife wanted to work in a supermarket but her maths is terrible, and once upon a time tills just gave a total and the checkout person had to calculate the change to give (mostly cash wayback).

It made life much easier when the tills started calculating the change as she could count out the notes/coins just fine. Of course nearly everything these days is card and no maths needed.

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I was always able to compensate by just counting up. If you work a till, you want to keep the money given you in plain sight anyway, until the transaction is finished just to deter scammers, so I could always see what I was given. So if the total was $10.75 and I was handed a $20, it didn't require any real maths. Just pull out a quarter, that makes $11, then 5 singles and a $5. I never had a problem making change counting up like that, and the machine trying to be "helpful" threw me off more than anything else so I never bothered. But if I was expected to try adding or subtracting numbers in my head, I was useless beyond rounding to integers and producing an estimate. That usually reared its ugly head when someone wanted to know what something cost after tax (unlike VAT, sales taxes in the US aren't generally included in the displayed price) and I would have to just punch it in. Got a brain BSOD just trying to do that.

Funny thing is that when it came to actual maths, I was pretty good; I had no problems with Calc or any of that, and was able to see the relations between bits in formulae to help remember them better. But once numbers started getting involved, then I'd have to rely on a machine.

[Terry 6]

Re: Users and printing devices...

And in the days of cash that's exactly what most till staff did. (Proffer a 20 for a £17.50 bill..It'd be "£17.50...18..19..20). Sometimes maddeningly slow way to make an obvious payment of change but hey, it worked for them.

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

The slow careful count is as much of a display as anything else. Same reason I kept what I was given on top the till (but visible to everyone) until the customer was walking away. Harder to pull the "I gave you a (larger denomination) or shortchange scams.

[Bob Royal]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Since I was offered change from a £7 note in a pub in Scotland years ago, I always said "£20 should cover it" when handing over a note. Cash doesn't happen so often now of course.

[TSM]

Re: Users and printing devices...

> So if the total was $10.75 and I was handed a $20, it didn't require any real maths. Just pull out a quarter, that makes $11, then 5 singles and a $5. I never had a problem making change counting up like that

Are you sure about that?

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I suppose I just look at it that way since even if I wasn't often hung-over (student and all) I'd struggle to tell someone what the change would be until I had counted it out (ie, doing the sums in my head) unless it was *really* simple. It was kinda the "child counting physical objects" level. It's sad to admit that right now it took me almost 30 seconds to do the subtraction of 10.75 from 20 in my head with the numbers as a sort of abstraction, and the counting method would have been faster.

[Bob Royal]

Re: Users and printing devices...

Since you mention Nvidia, I endorse not bothering with video drivers. I always used Nvidia cards with Nvidia drivers which had to be installed (what a fag! (english-english term.)) I gave all that the elbow when their driver started giving less than subtle hints that it didn't like my cards (which were older). So sod it, down to CEX to trade 'em in (for about the scrap value of the massive heat sinks.) So: 4 screen's-worth swapped for 9 screen's-worth of lightweight, slim & silent AMD Radeon cards, no cash exchanged. Shame my desk is only 5 screens wide, but no fuss, no muss; Linux native driver on Mint just does it. (Not talking gaming, never done that.)

P.S. Talking about printing, that works fine, but don't ask about scanning! What is it about software that just works, and then just doesn't at the next release?

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

I was gaming, and the last system I built with an Nvidia card was ages ago. ATI hadn't opensourced their drivers yet, and the ATI card I originally ordered wouldn't work with the blob of the time and I was stuck with onboard VGA graphics until I sent the card back and got the Nvidia one. *That* blob worked just fine on Linux. Except when I switched to a rolling version of SUSE. Usually every six months or so, the kernel was too new for the blob, and since I *was* doing stuff like gaming, the OSS driver wasn't good enough for the performance I needed.

Thankfully, when that happened, since I had system snapshots enabled, it took just a couple of reboot cycles to revert all the updates and I just waited a few weeks for the blob to catch up with the kernel I was using. Annoying when it did, but it only took a few minutes to deal with.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users and printing devices...

[2] is an unreferenced footnote. Which gave me an a.s.r flashback.

[hedgie]

Re: Users and printing devices...

And stuff like that is why I never try to code anything more sophisticated than a Bash or Perl script to automate system tasks. I probably edited out the reference and forgot to edit out the note.

[SVD_NL]

Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance...

I've got many, many stories of users messing up printers beyond repair while trying to solve basic tasks, here's some highlights:

1. A brave attempt at swapping out a toner cartridge. Unfortunately the user didn't realise a locking tab was in place, which also closed the opening in the cartridge. Their solution was to simply apply more force. Aftermath? The room was coated top to bottom in black carcinogenic dust! It genuinely looked like an explosion had taken place, the entire printer was coated, and a streak ran up the wall across the ceiling over to the other side! Bonus points for the brave soul who wanted to clean this up using a wet mop, at least they tried. I ended up printing a biohazard sticker (on a different printer) and sticking it on the door, and calling in a professional cleaner. I really wish i could've seen the perpetrator, this stuff is probably worse than the ink bombs they use for money.

2. Paper jam in a small simplex mono printer (i mention this because it's not some large MFP with a bunch of rolls and pulleys). They managed to solve the paper jam using their tool of choice: a knife! Unfortunately they also stabbed the drum to death. Of course none of this was mentioned in the service request, the printer just stopped working. We were shocked the first time, ended up replacing the printer (drum replacements weren't economically viable for those small printers). End of story? Nope! less than a week later the exact same story! The client followed our recommendation, and they implemented a new policy for that location, where only a few select users were "trained" at refilling paper, and any other task had to be performed by service techs...

3. Printer in a primary school, for some reason there weren't any rooms available that children couldn't reach. They called because of a really bad paper jam and a bunch of error codes. I have no clue how, but a child had managed to jam a colored pencil waaay into the innards of the printer. I was genuinely impressed! (I'm saying it was a child, but i have no way to be sure of that. It's a bit of a coping mechanism to assume it's a child, but realistically it could've been another improvised tool to "solve" a paper jam.)

[Bebu sa Ware]

"dust! It genuinely looked like an explosion had taken place,"

I suspect if they had lit up to ponder their efforts a decent dust explosion could been on the cards.

[Giles C]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance...

Number 1 sounds like a printer I had to deal with, the toner and drum were separate and you had to slide a metal shield between the parts to take the toner cart out.

Yes one day I did change the cart and the shield hadn’t fully locked and dumped the remaining contents of the toner cart on the floor.

I think it was a cheap Kyocera but this is mid 90s so could be wrong….

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance...

>but a child had managed to jam a colored pencil waaay into the innards of the printer.

Any kit that needs to work in a hostile environment, Military, Mining, North Sea Oil, Office with Lusers, etc - should be tested by being left in a room with a small child

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance...

You can add printers that sit at the POS terminals between the pits at Drive Through oil change places into that mix.

Icon - For the state of the keyboards at aforementioned locations.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance...

New printers, month or so later, weekend shift decided to retrieve new toner from a stash or the disposal stock & ram the incorrect toner cartridge into it & nigh on destroyed the printer (I'm not sure if it was replaced or we ended up having a new system board installed as well).

Icon - It was a weekend & test cell printer, so guess who was called in to deal with it.

[Terry 6]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance... Other way round also

Shortly after the Local Authority implemented central purchasing for external teams we bought a laser printer. Instead of me sourcing and installing it we had to get it through the IT guy responsible for this. Who brought it along and insisted on setting it up. In those days they were bloody expensive too.

And he didn't have a clue how. I could see he was struggling to instal the toner cartridge. ( it wasn't difficult and I'd done a few). Next thing I knew there was black powder everywhere, the drum was sitting on the window ledge in the daylight and he was using the only vacuum cleaner in the building to try and get the black power out from inside the printer.

Amazingly it worked once he'd actually put it together* But the drum didn't last long- and they denied responsibility, of course.

*I think it was a Brother

[Bob Royal]

Re: Ah, end users and basic printer maintenance... Other way round also

If it was Black Power, it probably was a Brother.

[LosD]

Sounds like the Xerox solid ink printers (Xerox bought the tech from someone else, I do believe it's kinda ancient), essentially melted wax printers

Those are (were? I'm not sure if they are made anymore) quite good looking compared to the color lasers. Nice and glossy finish, a bit like inkjets, and it didn't need photo paper for the glossiness. Though for photos, inkjets were still better.

[BartyFartsLast]

Tektronix Phaser technology, lovely stuff and really useful for transferring images to other surfaces with an iron

They were very fussy though, took an age to come ready from power on and woe betide you if you didn't shut them down properly because they didn't always work when powered back up.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

Tektronix?

Gory details Wikipedia: Solid Ink printers.

Tanks of oil don't seem to be involved but the buggers don't like being moved before properly cooled down.

I have had academics swear by them and I don't doubt legions of IT support staff swear at them (the printers mostly...) instead we purchased an HP9000dn from a retailer at a closeout price (a lot less than half the price of a solid ink xerox phaser.)

About a decade later when the 9000 seemed to be dead we purchased another 9000 and when we installed the new 9000 beside the defunct one, the original 9000 magically revived and was still working a few years later when I stopped.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

I've had chance to think - I believe the "oil reservoir" is referring to the "drum maintenance kit" - service manual for a Xerox example here:

https://laserpros.com/img/manuals/xerox-manuals/phaser-8860-8860mfp-service.pdf

It's basically a roller full of some kind of oil/lubricant which is pressed onto the drum at the bottom of the rotation, and then a small wiper that spreads it thinly. The idea is that the oil stops the wax sticking to the drum. I seem to remember we were told not to transport the printers with the maintenance kit installed as well as ensuring they were cold before moving them. Always good for a coffee when the customer ignored your call to say you were 20 minutes out, please shut it down: "Oh, you didn't shut it down? Well now I'll just have to stop and have a brew while it cools..."

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

The Japanese made a printer that leaked oil ?

So they did learn something from British motorbikes

[gryphon]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

Sometimes kit just knows its going to be superseded or replaced and suddenly starts working correctly or behaving.

It's quite uncanny.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

Yeah, I seem to scare kit into working when others have failed at finding or fixing an issue. I think the funniest was an Olivetti full tower server (486, "back in the day"!, lol). It had been RTBed, and that engineer got stuck and asked for assistance from the head engineer. Still no win. Then the MD/owner got involved (a good engineer himself). By this point the original fault had snowballed, through no fault of any of them. Final straw was to call in "the dev" just for an extra pair of eyes.

"What do I expect when I power up?" I asked all three standing there. "Nothing!" they chimed together. I pushed the power button, it fired up instantly. I walked away to three jaws on the ground, proudly claiming "That's what I do!" :)

24 hours of soak testing and back to a happy customer. Never failed again and never found out what the problem was! Maybe it really did have a ghost in that machine

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

You simply followed the appropriate rite to appease the Machine Spirit

[Pickle Rick]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

So that's what people mean when they call me a space marine cadet! :)

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

Truly an avatar of the Omnissiah.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: "Xerox bought the tech from someone else"

I'd swear blind at times machinery or equipment has a life or mind of its own & you can just feel instinctively that it's dead.

Especially true of cars, especially when in a breakers yard.

[Sam not the Viking]

Xerox Ink

Our marketing people bought one of those printers. The output was really impressive but the running costs were eye-watering. We only bought one set of ink-replacements (at first, I thought they were giant crayons: Suitable for Marketing.....).

[Martin an gof]

Re: Xerox Ink

In terms of just the ink, when I bought one for home it was comparable page-for-page with inkjet and slightly cheaper than laser (when using proper branded wax/ink/toner) though of course, over the years, this changed. Letting it go to "sleep" after about 30 minutes of inactivity did make time-to-first-print a bit longer, but took the idle power consumption down quite a bit (in this mode it still kept some liquid ink so it didn't have to go through the whole cleaning process, which is what happened on a power cycle). Putting it on a chunky sine-wave UPS dealt with having to do the whole cleaning cycle after a non-clean shutdown problem, but as I mentioned above, when the drum was life-expired I ended up buying a laser. By that time most laser toner was cheaper than the crayons, and Xerox were abandoning the technology anyway.

Shame, things move on. I don't (really) miss the dot matrix printers I used in the 1980s, though they were brilliant at preparing stencils for the ink duplicators we used for church newsletters and such. I never owned a daisy wheel printer, but I'd be tempted to make room for one if it came up for similar reasons to those which make me miss the Phaser; that is, print quality.

M.

[[e-mail]]

My wife worked at the engineering department of a big oil company where they had one of these solid wax printers.

One day, a user complained about smearing and wrong colours.

To ensure that the wax blocks were inserted in the proper shaft, they all had a different shape: round, square, triangular, etc.

It turned out, that one of the highly qualified mechanical engineers had jammed the blocks in the wrong shafts, a task that can usually be done properly by a 3 year old.

She swore that she would never set a foot on the company's oil platforms ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's right, it goes in the square hole!"

[Lazlo Woodbine]

My previous job was working in a large, prestigious boarding school.

My job was mostly fixing printers and reincarnating dead PCs, and I was regularly called to work magic in the many boarding houses around town.

One of the 9 houses was mostly populated by rugby player, who made little use of IT, so I was rarely called up to that house, which was handy, as it was half a mile up a muddy track.

That was until one day when the house master needed to print something, and found the printer unresponsive, so I was called for.

Upon examination, I found a paper jam, which on the Brother printers we used in the houses was an easy fix as they had few parts to remove to reveal the paper path.

Once freed, I discovered the jammed paper was a piece of lined paper from a refil pad, one that had already been written on, the jam caused by the jagged edges of the torn paper.

Why anyone at a £50k a year school thought it was a good idea to run writing paper through a printer was beyond me.

Anyway, the house master was so happy he could print his letters he gave me a couple of bottles of wine and I never had to visit that house again in my time at the school.

[Aladdin Sane]

Simple. Printers print on paper, the refill pad is full of paper, therefore the printer should be able to use it. If something so simple as a torn edge can knacker a printer it makes you wonder about the engineers.

In reverse, how many times have you raided the paper tray of a printer for a sheet of paper to write on/scribble on/make a paper plane?

[Aladdin Sane]

The lesson here is

Don't lend kit to a tool.

[CzechNeck]

They should have taken the Malcolm Tucker approach to clearing a paper jam:

https://youtu.be/M9spU_T9Oys

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

The Mrs Doyle is strong in this one....

[Sam not the Viking]

Tools

During my training period I was taught that a skilled man (person) never lends their tools. It's a stance that I have used in many instances. You just know that your beloved side-cutters will be used to cut barbed-wire or something.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping request was when I was asked to loan a £40k power-analyser (Company-owned....) because they didn't trust the accuracy of their home electricity-meter. This person was, in my opinion, incapable of correctly changing the battery in a torch.

[chivo243]

Old school

from a former colleague: As a young intern at some bigger corp, there was a print shop, and you submitted your print jobs, and you went to the counter picked them up from the printer(a person!).

When I was in high school, there was an industrial arts class "print shop" That class did all the forms for the school, all the forms(!), such as hall passes, tardy slips, and the "admit to class" you had to present for absences! I'm glad to have had friends in that class!

[Luiz Abdala]

To be honest...

...some printers deserve the treatment that would get the Geneva Convention and Human Rights suing you for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity if you applied it to anything alive, let alone sentient.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: To be honest...

Yes, but on the other hand, some printers themselves would class as a cruel and unusual punishment...

[Antron Argaiv]

During COVID

I was WFH, so I pulled out the HP Laserjet 5 I had picked up (for free, because not working) and decided to get it working.

I have to say, at this point, that machine is one of the best built, best engineered and easiest to work on that I have ver seen. Also, I soon discovered that there are (or were) a large number of companies selling repair parts for it at very reasonable prices (as it was pretty much the standard office printer for years). Refurbed ones are also available. No DRM or expiry dates on these blokes, they're pre-enshittified HP. Mine came from a legal office in town, and seemed to work, except that the paper that came out of it did not have the toner fused to it. The test page said it had 300k copies through it, and I am told it is good for three times that.

Over the next couple of weeks, in between doing Real Work, I fixed up a basement office for myself, and worked on the printer. About $200 later, I had a working printer with a rebuilt fuser, maxed out RAM, network card ($15 off eBay) and a recycled toner cartridge. Hooked it up and it did what it was designed to do...printed beautiful black-on-white documents. When it was idle, it would "sleep"...drawing only 7 watts. I configured my desktop Linux box as a print server so SWMBO could print from her Apple gear. It is still running to this day, and still using the same toner cartridge (I have three more NIB genuine ones, $15 each off Goodwill). It will outlive me.

[Luiz Abdala]

Re: During COVID (Laserjet 5's)

Laserjet 5's where one of the reasons the clip-on tie was invented, they could choke less sturdy blokes.

And it had actual steel gears, with enough traction for a RC toy or a school project conveyor belt system.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: During COVID (Laserjet 5's)

The gears I had to replace (fuser drive gears) were plastic. Designed to fail and protect more expensive parts, I suspect. $30 the set, IIRC, and childishly easy to replace. I'm impressed by the (Canon) engineering that went into that printer. Someone kept it vacuumed out, as well, so I try to live up to the care it had received before it came to me.

The "firmware date" on the status page was 1993. You have to be impressed when a piece of gear is still working to original specs after 32 years. Which is why my home computing stuff is almost entirely surplus or refurb commercial gear...built strong and available cheap when superceded by The Next Big Thing. That 48 port HP gigabit switch works fine for my needs, and was free from the IT guys at work when they upgraded.

[Wellyboot]

Re: During COVID

Totally agree about the Laserjet 5 series, I've seen these beasts rack up page counts over the 2 million mark (pallets of A4 paper arriving every Monday morning) with little more than the regular application of maintenance kits.

[RMclan]

Re: During COVID

Back in the mid 1990s we had an HP Laserjet 4si MX. Once a year I'd spend a week printing off 13,000 mailmerged invoices and 30,000+ pages of translations (14 different languages). Jams were almost unheard of, I just kept the beast fed with paper (2 x 500 sheet trays) & toner and it would quite happily rumble away for hours on end.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: During COVID

WFH pre-COVID my daughter had an employer provided HP all-in-one which looked fairly like my old, pre-enshitified-HP version until you touched it and felt how flimsy it was. Some minor problem and neither of us could even get the paper tray back into it, partly for fear of breaking it. She had to get it swapped out. That old HP stuff is almost indestructible by conventional weapons.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

I remember those printers!

Beautiful colors. SLOW. Saw it presented at the University of Stuttgart during an open day with some of those devices shown. That specific printer even needed three runs where it printed each color separately, and the color on the paper even felt "rich". It was somewhere 1986 or 1987...

[TonyJ]

Memories...

This brings back memories of printer repairs in the mid 90's.

I didn't actually work on them but my friend did. The sheer volume that he got back damaged because someone had dragged a jammed page through rather than opening the correct doors and relieving pressure from feeds was staggering.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Memories...

Easy to blame users, but perhaps the blame should fall on the designers who produced an easy to jam and easy to damage when jammed. Pulling is more obvious than finding which od several visible tabs and levers opens the magic release or door.

[ComicalEngineer]

Tools for Tools

I am an engineer and the type that grew up around large lumps of moving metal made in Luton (Bedford trucks). Thus I have a comprehensive toolkit which used to live under my desk and was used for various tasks including building or repairing office furniture, occasional car repairs for other members of staff etc. I also had a smaller and more delicate toolkit in my desk drawer which I used for computer repairs.

One day I came back from lunch to find my big toolbox open and a large screwdriver missing.

A search around the building and I found a young female clerical assistant attempting to open a tower case (which usually sat under the desk) by prising it open with the screwdriver wedged into the rear of the (very solid) steel case! The case was the sort that could be opened simply by pressing the relevant spring loaded locking lugs upwards and opening the hinged side of the case. (Dell Dimension from the 1990s?)

It turned out that the young lady in question had taken off her engagement ring and managed to drop it into the open CD tray from whence it ended up inside the CD drive. She was in tears trying to get the computer open.

Fortunately I got to her before she damaged the case other than a few scratches.

Turned out that the ring was inside the CD drive which had to be removed, the tray opened and shaken gently until said ring fell out.

Some very strong words were said but it turned out that she had only been engaged a few days and had taken the ring off to moisturise her hands!

Fortunately the PC and the CD drive lived to fight another day. The young lady who was a temp, disappeared a few days later never to be seen again.

[VCSMaster]

Wow! A Tektronix Phaser, that's a printer I haven't heard of in a long time. That is almost certainly what they were using given the "blocks of crayon wax" description. Xerox bought the Tektronix printing division in the 90s and the line continued as the Xerox Phaser - But it's worth noting that Xerox was selling color laser printers as early as 1982 if you had the money to spend. Even the Phaser was on sale at the same time as HP's first Color LaserJet, built on the same Canon engine as the LJ5. Perhaps the Phaser was just the cheapest option.

Boy are they hard to find nowadays.

[Wellyboot]

I still have a Tektronix logo* t-shirt, a freebie option with printer long, long ago...

[Bob Royal]

Wow! A Tektronix Phaser

I bet that was a stunner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tektronix Phaserjet

Awesome machines.

Used to work at al Apple dealership in the 80's and sold a few to some DTP houses for prototyping designs. Had more than one customer come back and say their customer complained because the final printed copy didn't have same "texture" as the proof copies...!

[Nyle]

Tektronix, Inc. Phaserjet solid ink printers then bought by Xerox. They promised free black ink for the life of the printer and then did not honor that. The print quality wasn't bad but there were all kinds of long term repair issues with them.

Reminds me of the first color "dot matrix" printers which used a wax ribbon and heated heads and burned through "ribbons" like nobodies business but for the time, they were very good.

Textronix Phaserjet released what 1991 and HP Color Laserjet what 1994 - easy to see why Lasers won.

[steviebuk]

And there's the knob IT engineer part

"and Louis made sure to equip it with a warning label which explained that if anyone outside the IT team did anything other than load fresh paper, it was a firing offence."

Be nice and not passive aggressive. No one likes IT engineers with god complexes. Just put a note to say "Only to be repaired by IT".

Someone ripped off the paper sensor arm in our large MFD the other day, trying to clear a jam. Lucky it wasn't snapped or the business would of been charged for the repair. The helpful engineer (we're not experts so only do the basics) said "Someone was being heavy handed trying to clear a jam. They need to clear it along the path of travel". I never knew that but luckily always have done anyway as its easier.

So instead of putting an accusing message out, I made it neutral, calm and informative.

Again, no one likes a god complex IT engineer. Those that I've worked with get called "A cunt".

[xyz123]

I once has a very high up manager that wanted wireless for their office. So they cut the cable for an overhead access point and took it into their office. And then complained to IT that it didn't work.

"you cut the power cable AND the ethernet"....."but it's WIRELESS, it doesn't need those"

[blu3b3rry]

They indeed walk among us!

[Doctor Syntax]

""but it's WIRELESS, it doesn't need those""

"Well, you've just proved yourself wrong, haven't you?"

[Antron Argaiv]

Reminds me of the IT Crowd episode where Jen got to borrow The Internet.

[SomersetHob]

Tektronic Phasers, yes supported these, and each colour of wax had a specific shape, like the kids games.

Lets just say some of the users in the Marketing Department couldn't work this out

[heyrick]

Why on earth did they lend a tool to a non-techie to "fix" a bit of kit? That's like giving a hand grenade to a child then being surprised when Bad Things happen.