I have come to the conclusion that if there is 1 electronic that has animosity towards humans, its printers. And it’s virtually all printers as it could be your home printer or the one at work. No matter what, they never work flawlessly.
Years ago when I worked at DSW corporate, it became a weekly occurence that I would be flinging open the flimsy, cream color printer cabinet and begin pulling out printer spools (I think that is what they were) and adjusting levers. I learned the hard way that evidently, various parts of the printer get hotter than Haiti’s. While gingerly pulling out pieces of paper with tweezers, it was like operations not to touch the hot areas and burn your finger tips off.
The “help” as the printer companies call it, found on the printer monitor, is on par with Microsoft help, virtually non-existent. Was this helpful? Yes or No, is always at the end of Microsoft help. I want to be like “hell no, that made absolutely no sense!”
Why Printers are D**** (or the people using them)
- When you are EXTREMELY busy; like pushing to make a deadline, guess what? The last ass hole who printed off 110 pages, failed to refill the paper and now you have to paper cut your fingers while opening up a new packet of paper.
- Isn’t it glorious, fishing remnants of a now chewed up piece of paper from the printer? And God forbid you leave a spec as the printer is on its period and will give you attitude by simply still not printing.
- Who decided that ink cartridges need to cost so much? $25 for black ink? Is it infused with baby laughter? No, it’s not. I have a tip for you guys on this one, to stick it to the man. If you go on supermediastore.com, you can buy ink at a fraction of the cost. You are buying remanufactured cartridges and the only difference is you’ll get a message that says the printer doesn’t recognize the ink. Passive aggressive bitch. Additionally, there has always been a 10% off, Super Media Store coupon at retailmenot.com. To give you an example of the savings: black ink for my Canon printer is $22.99 at Staples but only $12.60 (after 10% coupon) and free shipping on supermediastore.com. I’ve bought it like this for years.
- This leads me to my next issue. Why does a single ink cartridge only provide you with like 10 pages of ink? That’s really super when I mess up a bunch and have to do it over and over again. I now immediately sit down and order new ink the minute I install a new cartridge.
- The first time I attempted to make the printer wireless and hook it up to our home wi-fi left me borderline bat-shit crazy. No, strike that. I was bat shit crazy. It took me 3 hours! 3 hours to figure the stupid thing out.”Honey, why don’t you take a break and work on that tomorrow?” My husband asked me with concern in his eyes.”Nope! This is personal now. This is about the principal of getting that stupid machine to work!” I screamed like Joan Crawford, holding a wire hanger and Oil of Olay on her face.
So when my husband bought a new router last week and I realized I would have to do this all over again, it was like someone told me I’d be giving birth again….right now….and without an epidural. I died a little inside. Fortunately, I was smart and consulted YouTube to watch a guy set his printer up. What took me 3 hours the first time, took me only 30 minutes, including watching the video.
- Why do printers just up and decide not to work? Like, What, it’s Tuesday? 3 minutes before the meeting with your boss and you have to print your analysis? Not today homey! Have fun routing your computer to the accounts payable printer in 2 minutes.
- And sometimes the printer decides you would prefer your e-mails on landscape now or legal size paper versus standard. I swear I do absolutely nothing to the settings and this happens.
You think a lone printer is bad…? I sit across the hall at work from our workhorse machine- a printer, scanner, copier, fax machine combo. And because of my youth (automatically knowing how all things electronic work) and my vicinity to said machine, anytime something isn’t working properly, I’m the one who has to tackle the issue. And yes, this includes keeping the paper stocked (because I work with morons), keeping the supplies ordered and changed (even when someone uses the last of the cyan ink cartridge and doesn’t tell me), and any other issue it may have.
And the kicker: because I work for the state, we have all of our electronics, including this beast, leased to us by a contract company, meaning: when there really is something wrong and we have to get someone to come out and look at it, it takes dozens of emails including information that you would think would be needed (like the date we got the machine, who originally ordered the machine, etc), only to wait a week to see a tech, have them do their thing, leave, and the machine still doesn’t work. Just went through this cycle- took them 3 weeks from the time it stopped working to having it back to normal.
Jesus! That’s horrible! And I bet you were not told that would be part of your job! I have yet to work with a printer (home and work) that performs flawlessly. Good luck friend!
LOL “is it infused with baby laughter” omg you kill me!! but also: what’s with the lady and the wire hangers? Second time in a week you’ve referenced it and I need some context lol.
I hate printers with a passion, but the worst is photocopiers. GAH! they are horrible. The funny thing is, I could use the one in Korea which only had Korean buttons and instructions, better than I could ever use one in a public school in Canada.
Wait…you’ve not seen the movie Mommy Dearest? Your gonna need to see it. It’s super old but super good. It’s a true story on how the 40’s actress Joan Crawford adopted 2 children (pretty much for publicity) and was the WORST mother on Earth. Mental and physical abuse. She FLIPS OUT when she goes into her daughter’s closet to find wire hangers in lieu of padded, silk hangers.
No I’ve never seen it! Lol
Go rent it girl!
Oh, and how ’bout when they start rationing print jobs? Like, you just need 15 copies of this thing—for perfectly legitimate reasons, by the way—and the printer gets all, “No. You may have one. Fiiiiiine, one more. Gah, why you so needy?” and you’re left shrieking like a fuckin’ raptor at a $100 hunk of plastic.
Seeee…..PRINTERS ARE DICKS!!! THE WORST!!!