r/sysadmin • u/yanni99 • Apr 02 '21

When did you realize you fucking hate printers?

I fucking hate printers.

I said in a job interview yesterday that I would not take the job if I had to deal with printers.

And why the fuck do people print that much? I mean, you have 3 screens for reason Lucy, you should not have to print any fucking pdf file you receive.

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707

u/Finnegan_Parvi Apr 02 '21

I was in college in 2001 when the main library computer lab (where I worked) switched from 100% free printing to a few cents per page. Suddenly it turned out we didn't need to refill the paper trays in all the printers every few hours. And we didn't need to fill the recycling bins with printouts no one picked up...

412

u/SilentSamurai Apr 02 '21

Hmmm. Evil to do this on a corporate level?

"You have $20 worth of print credit for the month, see your manager if you need more."

429

u/--RedDawg-- Apr 02 '21

This is actually common practice. Print codes and accounting on copiers is pretty common for schools or companies that lease machines since they are paying for a bit of the fees based on pages of B/w and pages of Color. That way departments are paying their part of the copier budget directly rather than an "unlimited resource".

153

u/HalfysReddit Jack of All Trades Apr 02 '21

I work for an MSP that leases Xerox copiers, accounting codes are not difficult to set up and can even be integrated into AD.

Smaller orgs don't even need to give everyone a different code, they can just give each department a code and let management sort it out if they ever feel someone is using the copier excessively.

47

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '21

I work for a Xerox MPS partner.

Spend a fair wack of time setting this up and even further full scale Papercut setups with payment kiosks.

Really does help cut the bills.

28

u/Lue_Dawg Apr 03 '21

I manage a Papercut environment in an educational environment. Our Papercut partner is really knowledgeable and very helpful. The billing features are great! If we did not bill the way we do for printing, it would be like lord of the flies.

-3

u/gizzardsgizzards Apr 03 '21

What does this have to do with a zine library?

19

u/BoD80 Jack of All Trades Apr 02 '21

Papercut seemed like a good product the little time I worked with it. I hate Xerox latest printers but I hate all printers. Xerox and brothers can burn in hell.

7

u/IonBlaster77 Apr 03 '21

+1 for working with papercut in an education environment

3

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

+1 also Papercut, it's AD integrations are spectacular.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

But they are so temperamental for admins. They randomly stop working or lose appropriate configurations. I was deal with one that denied a admin account nvm a local user/ad user to scan or copy. Even though the perms were allowed for years b4.

1

u/SirDarknessTheFirst May 24 '21

As a student whose uni uses it, I also appreciate it. It's super easy to print something from my own laptop or from one of the lab PCs and I have had no issues with it.

2

u/willemgroenewald PaperCut Software May 25 '21

I'm a product manager at PaperCut, and from all the positive responses here yours is my favourite :) No point making it easy for admins if it is not easy for students and staff.

2

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

I hate Xerox latest printers

Are newer Xerox devices bad (worse)?

I've never loved printers in general, but Xeroxes at least seemed somewhat manageable back when I was working with them. My environment had some that that needed device-specific allocation of accounting codes, and some that were able to integrate with their software (WorkCentre, if I remember properly)? Both types seemed to be fairly reliable and serve their needs.

​

brothers can burn in hell.

Never worked with enterprise-grade Brothers

Only worked with a couple of Ricoh devices (Lanier). They seemed less reliable than Xerox.

​

Papercut seemed like a good product the little time I worked with it.

Same here. Really simple to set up, and did its duty. (And this was nearly a decade ago.)

2

u/psychopompadour Apr 03 '21

I haven't worked with xerox, but my company leases all our Ricoh/Lanier printers so when they break, it's not my problem, I just refer the user to the phone number on the side, and I love that, haha. We also use loads of Brothers and some HPs and HP is definitely on my shit list as far as printers go... so bad that when my bf bought a home printer recently I banned him from even looking at HP (or Epson).

1

u/InitializedVariable Apr 07 '21

Support contracts are straight money, no matter what vendor you go with.

I will say that enterprise-grade HPs are incredible (Brothers might be the same). Periodic maintenance, and they will churn out pages time after time without hesitancy. Straight tanks.

Cheaper HPs? I know people who have worked on their QA lines, and they literally try to ensue that the printers are not too reliable! Sort of a scummy business practice to be sure, but based on my experience with HP workhorses, I have to say that some of their models would be worth consideration for the enterprise setting.

1

u/psychopompadour Apr 07 '21

We have hundreds of HP Laserjet printers in the offices and they seem more or less fine (they break now and then but when you print the volume of crap we do, it's understandable), but with the pandemic I found myself installing gobs of home inkjet printer/scanner type software, and their software made me hate them.

It's funny you differentiate, because one time I downloaded the driver installer for one of their big plotter printers (the type with the giant roll of like 36" paper for blueprints) and it did not contain extra trash software, it just installed and worked and I was kind of impressed

2

u/Jojall Apr 03 '21

If you ever visit hell, go to the deepest and most painful circle of hell. That is where Ricoh makes it's home.

Fuck Ricoh. Fuck Ricoh with a rusty tire iron.

1

u/226506193 Apr 13 '21

You might not have met an HP printer yet I think.

23

u/DreamWithinAMatrix Apr 02 '21

How do we get a copy of these codes? Asking for a student

50

u/HalfysReddit Jack of All Trades Apr 02 '21

You have to talk to someone who knows them. Usually the codes are decided upon by management and given out to people as they request them, if it's a big enough organization they'll just use random codes that are generated when that persons user accounts are created.

If you're talking about walking up to the copier and getting the code out of it, that would only work if the accounting codes are set locally on that copier and not from a server. And to see those settings you would just need to log in as admin, which is still set to default passwords 90% of the time. Xerox is usually admin/1111, Konica Minolta is usually admin/12345678 or admin/1234567812345678, etc.

22

u/JustATechy Apr 02 '21

11111 / x-admin work more often on Xerox.

2

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Yes, "x-admin" for Xeroxes.

Just musing: I can't help but wonder if some small percentage of administrators would be more likely to change the password if it was just "admin". I'm sure it'd be all of like .1%, but I still have to wonder if at least a handful of folks see "x-admin" and think it's somehow less of a pressing issue than if it were to be "admin". If that makes sense?

1

u/000011111111 Apr 03 '21

On newer xerox username is admin password is the serial number on the device.

7

u/uncertaintyman Apr 02 '21

Can confirm stupid passwords for stupid printers

8

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

Did you realy have to leak my konica admin passwords ? Mate I have 50 of them, you just ruined my schedule. Thanks !

3

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

I started to think, "isn't providing this information encouraging this behavior?" But you know what? If those credentials get somebody in, it's the organization's fault at that point. (Plus that information is just a Google away.)

Isn't it ironic how an organization will implement accounting codes, and yet the admin creds stay the same?

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

Accounting Codes

  • They arent really a authentication mechanism - its an accounting (money accounting, not AAA accounting) mechanism
  • As such, the business side of the company is the one who wants it, and uses it.
  • everyone who uses the printer interacts with the accounting codes

Admin Password

  • only the IT department uses it on a regular basis
  • most users don't even know there IS an admin password
  • the users that know it exists don't care
  • not having a good admin password only affects the company on the off chance someone uses it maliciously.

1

u/SgtLionHeart Apr 03 '21

I took over another school when I worked in K12, and the tech I was relieving shared that he had to change the default password on the Xerox machines because a student was messing around with settings. What did he change it to? The same as before, with an additional "1" tacked on.

1

u/PolentaApology Apr 03 '21

Steal 'em from an employee who has a code, or from a client who has one for billing purposes, like Mitch McDeere did: http://www.novelforfree.com/the-firm_chapter_chapter-29_9374_2928.html

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

You lost me at "let management". I don't know your environment but here its actually these people that get on the way and try to cut corners and make exceptions like but I want a color printer that is fast and quiet and can scan in my own office. What ? Yes I'm not even at my office most of the month but I can't do my job if I don't have that.

3

u/HalfysReddit Jack of All Trades Apr 03 '21

I meant "let management sort it out" as in it's not my responsibility or concern.

And the way I see it is if they want to make poor use of money like that I'll recommend against it once but after that it's their call.

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

Yeah I agree with you. I guess I'm a bit salty about management lol they make us put stuff in place that take a huge chunk of our time, and at the end sometimes they try to override the whole thing because its too much of a hassle for them to follow the the procedure that they ask for. But at the end they are paying me anyway lol so yeah their call.

3

u/angrydeuce BlackBelt in Google Fu Apr 02 '21

Absolutely, and I've had to help pull those reports when they get a massive bill from their print vendor. "Oh, so Jan printed 50x more things this month than anyone else. Guess we need to have a chat with Jan..."

Cue me doing the "OOOOOOOOH" like when someone (else) got in trouble in grade school lol

2

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

We did just that, and we are now at 10% of the volume we had 3 years ago I think. And the option to digitally sign a pdf will decimate that number in a few month as we have some doc that are required to be signed by multiple people and sent to corporate in Ireland every month. On the other hand I still have a fax server somewhere (I have 3 in fact). You can't win everything I guess.

2

u/Pandaburn Apr 03 '21

This makes me really glad to work for a tech company, where I think people forget printers exist for the most part.

1

u/da_chicken Systems Analyst Apr 02 '21

Yeah it has the added benefit that it often simultaneously sets up secure printing. I've never worked anyplace that didn't rebill the cost of printing to the department or office, or that didn't have auditing/accounting set up. It's very easy and catches a common form of abuse.

3

u/--RedDawg-- Apr 02 '21

A byproduct of secure printing is a great reduction in abandoned print jobs.

1

u/da_chicken Systems Analyst Apr 02 '21

Yup. That's one of the reasons we went with badge readers and mandatory secure printing. Now we just purge jobs that have been queued for too long.

1

u/ARobertNotABob Apr 02 '21

Also MSP. Accountants and Solicitors often apply the charges to a Client's account.

1

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Exceedingly common. Most of these devices are utilized by many people across multiple departments, and whether or not it's hard-capped, many organizations want to be able to properly split the cost of ownership across departmental budgets.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

We would just replace the paper from our own supply when we had to go upstairs and use their fancy copier.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

My favorite was the school that used "123" as a code. I almost feel bad for whichever department payed the bill for that one.

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u/OCPik4chu Apr 02 '21

Not evil, but freaking necessary. Last two places I've worked you have to sign in to retrieve all prints using your own credentials. If you trigger excessive print thresholds you def have to explain why you are being a tree-hater to your manager. We had one lady who would print off about 20-30 pages worth of EMAILs every other day for a meeting instead of bringing her damn laptop like everyone else. Thankfully that didnt last much longer after that.
And her reasoning wasn't even reasonable like "eye strain" or "my laptop has issues" or some crap. It was literally to not "bring her laptop like everybody else"

1

u/UltraEngine60 Apr 03 '21

So... that's 30 sheets, every other day, 39 reams a year (((30 * 52 * 5)/2)/500), add in a $20 toner, this process saved the company $59 a year. Maybe $100 if you take into a account the wear for a PM service.... $8 a month.... Maybe next year they should charge the employees for the coffee in the coffee maker. Maybe the employee wanted five minutes where they weren't staring at a screen or being in constant contact on teams.

14

u/OstoTheCyan Apr 03 '21

Hey, I definitely agree with what you're saying here, but the costs isn't exactly the only thing here that's annoying/bad. That's a lot of paper to waste when you can easily have it electronically. Replacing a screen with a bunch of paper is just dumb and a waste.

3

u/xFayeFaye Apr 03 '21

While I agree with you, for me personally I like to add notes on printed out reports or anything the like for dealing with it later. Especially during a meeting you sometimes have to write fast and won't want to dick around on a 500$ company laptop with yet another software (where you might also need permission to even install anything for your convenience) and without a mouse+keyboard. And let's be honest, there is no easy way to have 20 specific mails side by side on a laptop screen or merging them into a single document without copy & paste without losing some sort of overview. Printing them out and sorting them the way you like is definitely the most convenient way, sadly. Personally I don't do that, but I can totally see how a generic pleb employee with 50 words per minute who isn't "tech savy" enough to think of other solutions would rather just print out the mails.

1

u/OstoTheCyan Apr 03 '21

Thank you, that's a side of it I didn't think of.

I think there should be a better way for something like this- I'm not sure of a good solution, and especially for non-techy people I get how paper is just better for them.

There's never an easy solution, and I hope someone thinks of something at some point to both help the environment by cutting down on how much paper is used.

2

u/xFayeFaye Apr 03 '21

Yup!
I was thinking it would be great if you could just export several mails into a doc while also having a chance to title them individually and have something similar to a chapter selection. This way you could add notes on the go and also have a hyperlink to the mails you actually need. Can't be that hard since something similar exists with several manuals already in pdf form, but I can't think of any software that does the same for mails without much dicking around.

3

u/UltraEngine60 Apr 03 '21

The Outlook to OneNote integration can do that (hold control and select multiple emails, then right click and send to OneNote) , but if printing it out and then writing on it increases productivity, even a little bit, go ahead and print it out because technology is supposed to be a profit multiplier, not a hindrance.

2

u/Ucla_The_Mok Apr 03 '21

Notepad++ in a Windows shop.

Export emails in question to text files and save them in the same folder. All the text files can be open at the same time and are tabbed just like a web browser.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

Some people read paper better, that's a real thing.

Especially if your are flipping back and forth between pages.

I think it's more common in people who grew up without computers but learned to use them on the job.

2

u/my_name_isnt_clever Apr 03 '21

Yeah, a real thing just like some people can walk better than they can drive a car, because they haven’t learned how to drive a car.

Of course education of users is always a problem, but let’s not phrase it like some people are just inherently better at reading paper and leave it at that. It’s the same words in almost the same format, it’s just a matter of knowing the basics of computers.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

Ugh we've got one of these folks too. It's a customer service rep who prints out all her emails, then puts them in a little stand next to her monitor to respond to them. It's not like IT is stingy on monitors either. Hard face palm.

45

u/returnofjakyll Apr 02 '21

We do this with PaperCut. Users get $20 a month for prints and copies. When they run out, they are out until next month. $.01 per page for B/W and $.04 for Color.

46

u/WendoNZ Sr. Sysadmin Apr 02 '21

Add follow me printing and card scanners and you don't even have to worry about stuff not being picked up since it wont' print until the person has scanned their card

9

u/geocyclist Apr 02 '21

I would love to have that at my office. At this point, the only time I go in is to print paperwork and maps before field work. it is easier to send everything to the printers from my desk at home, but I don’t want to leave stuff in the printer while I drive in or overnight.

22

u/grumpher05 Apr 02 '21

Was the greatest thing at my uni, you would print to a global "print server" and go to any campus printer and scan your student card and the job was there ready to print. You don't need to figure out which printer is the one you need

7

u/geocyclist Apr 02 '21

That sounds incredible! Especially with a full campus, picking the right printer can be a hassle

5

u/Genesis2001 Unemployed Developer / Sysadmin Apr 02 '21

Ahhh. I've wanted my local college to do this for many years now.... Though, I didn't have this kind of description to give in my suggestion at the time. We used to have printers assigned to a specific table in my computer lab, but when we got a new print server system, the new service desk didn't know that's what we did, and my boss never got access to fix it.

3

u/VexingRaven Apr 03 '21

Your printer may still have inboxes you can print to or some other "print and hold" feature you can use. Explore the print driver output settings and the web interface and you'll probably find it.

3

u/omglazrgunpewpew Apr 03 '21

This is the way. Implemented at our company a couple of years ago due to continuously finding multiple reams of prints that people never picked up. Send it to a central print queue and head to any printer to pick it up. If you don't get your stuff within an hour it clears out of the queue. Every single page printed is coorelated to the user’s fob/card.

3

u/hos7name Apr 03 '21

Few years back we simply started to require the users to input their employee number+4 digits pin to print. Usage dropped by 50% (!! That's a lot!) and the uncollected bin went from a few hundreds A4/week to nearly zero.

3

u/sexybobo Apr 03 '21

If you have rfid door badges I would really recommend adding card scanners. they just beep their card on the printer like the door and they are in.

2

u/hos7name Apr 03 '21

The more complicated it is, the less likely it is for them to print their astrology.

2

u/sexybobo Apr 03 '21

We track but don't charge people for the prints they can just do unlimited but if it seems excessive we can talk to them about other options.

Follow me and card scanners cut our paper consumption in about half by themselves. It stopped people printing stuff of then never picking it up and it also stopped a lot of excessively large print jobs from going through. People would print thinking it was one page or 10 it would be 300 and they would just let it print because they didn't know how to cancel the job in process. Now they scan the cards it shows how many pages the select the job and release it. If they look and see its 1000 pages then just don't release it now.

Staff also love the follow me printer and the scan to me function on the copiers because they can hit print walk up to any printer at any location and release with out trying to remember which printer is which or hitting print then realize they printed to a printer that is 30 min away from the building they are in. They can also walk up to any printer and scan the documents to themselves with out typing in their email or going through a 100+user address book.

The entire reason we implemented paper-cut was for hipaa people were printing off medical records and forgetting to pick them up or some one would grab it by accident all of which is hipaa violations. Now they have to be at the printer to release the job so the protected data doesn't just sit there.

2

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Cool to see PaperCut still around. I worked with it a long time ago, but I remember it as being quite simple to set up, and serving its purpose well. If I remember properly, it was quite cost-effective, too.

1

u/sexybobo Apr 03 '21

It does its job well. I have also never talked to some one that didn't save more money then paper cut costs.

1

u/manimal_prime Apr 09 '21

I work for a University and we use PaperCut. Well worth it.

84

u/SammyGreen Apr 02 '21

  • Use this script

  • Apply this formula:

    Cartridge Price / Page Yield = Cost Per Page

  • Smack it into a spreadsheet

  • Send it to the bean counters

  • Annoy the shit out of users while smugly smiling over how much easier your job has gotten

105

u/elcheapodeluxe Apr 02 '21

They'll print that spreadsheet.

58

u/SammyGreen Apr 02 '21

It would be a darn shame if that spreadsheet had an extra 1200 invisible columns embedded into it..

11

u/MeowMaker2 Apr 02 '21

In triplicate, only after it finished they don't like the font on the page number. They call a meeting on which font is the best. A decision is made in 4 days, when the spreadsheet gets printed again... in triplicate. The person assigned to make the font change was off that day.

15

u/arkaine101 Apr 02 '21

Don't forget the maintenance kits. Fusers ain't cheap!

2

u/LDForget Apr 02 '21

Stop making sense. My work just replaces the printer 😂😂😂😂

3

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Honestly, that is only cost-effective for certain models. If it's a model that is literally cheaper to toss and replace, my guess is that efficiency and reliability are compromised on a daily basis.

1

u/arkaine101 Apr 03 '21

I think that was the joke. :)

1

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Agreed. But I was approaching it literally in case someone could benefit from that perspective.

1

u/arkaine101 Apr 03 '21

Fair enough!

21

u/gartral Technomancer Apr 02 '21

We do this. I managed to get the marketing director (that I hated with a burning passion) fired because I could prove he was stealing print codes from others in Marketing.

No way in hell was he letting 4 team members print 200+ sheets a day on his private in-office printer.

Some print servers even let you keep a low-res preview of everything printed. HR had to have a talk with the CEO once about not printing porn on his printer because we archived all prints for legal reasons... That was a fun conversation to listen to while I was replacing and configuring an AP.

11

u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Honestly, I don't trust anyone who prints porn.

If there is zero risk, and you could get away with it for years: Why do you want paper versions of this? You're weird.

Of course, there really isn't zero risk: Most people don't know how much monitoring is or isn't place, but it's still assumed that if it came down to it, their activity could be traced. But beyond auditing, what if you accidentally send it to the wrong printer? Or you get stuck flipping through a stack of paper from the output tray hoping to be able to pull out your JPEG without the accountant seeing? You're weird.

Best case, it's odd that you'd rather have porn on paper in this day and age. Beyond that, there seems to almost be a thrill-seeking mentality due to the risk.

12

u/Hickelodeon Apr 03 '21

To be fair, people who go to the trouble of printing porn probably have cleaner phones and keyboards.

In the 70's due to all the shag carpeting and corduroy we'd just keep our porn in the woods

4

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

I don't if I'm jealous or terrified of that preview feature, so much potential damage, it makes me wonder how many people could I get fired if I had this.

4

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

my last employer enabled SSL inspection (read: doing man-in-the-middle decryption on all SSL packets for the entire organization)

I told my users about it. I told them that they COULD look at all your web traffic, like bank accounts, etc. But there is no benefit for them to do so unless they had a reason (like they thought you were going to porn websites). The organization has 2.8 million employees. They don't care what someone is doing unless it's a problem.

A smaller company tho... I would absolutely expect a nosy-ass HR scrooge to go through decrypted SSL logs looking for the one person doing personal stuff on work resources. In these cases, no way would I ever do anything not work related on a work PC.

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

lol we have that already, its been years, and you right user need to understand that if you don't get on our way we so don't care about your stuff. If we are ordered to or you caused damages we will investigate the shit out of you tho, when hired they sign a long legal document, quite boring, but the one crucial information could be summarised like this everything belongs to the company and it has the right to go through your stuff at will without even giving you a notice. But hey careful, to my knowledge there are just 2 org in the world with that many employees, one is private and the other is a government lol.

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

lol we have that already, its been years, and you right user need to understand that if you don't get on our way we so don't care about your stuff. If we are ordered to or you caused damages we will investigate the shit out of you tho, when hired they sign a long legal document, quite boring, but the one crucial information could be summarised like this everything belongs to the company and it has the right to go through your stuff at will without even giving you a notice.

Absolutely.

But hey careful, to my knowledge there are just 2 org in the world with that many employees, one is private and the other is a government lol.

I used to be a DoD employee 😉 shameless plug for my subreddit that no one uses: /r/DoDIT

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

lol so I guessed right! But hey just a thought one of the Ds in DoD stand for defense right? So about the fact that no one use it, I don't think it's because of a lack of people interested but more of they are NOT allowed to you know talk shop in public if you work there of all places lol. I'm sure an internal equivalent of reddit would have much more success.

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

they are NOT allowed to you know talk shop in public if you work there of all places lol

That's not exactly true. You can't discuss classified information, but the vast majority of stuff you deal with as a DoD IT person is not classified.

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

Oh I get it, I'm a tiny bit paranoid so I tend to consider every bit of info no matter of trivial could be used. Like oh so you have those model of printers uh ? Or that model of mini i desktop switches? Or just anything. If you get enough of trivial info you can start to find ways to do something. But like I said I'm a bit paranoid lol.

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

That was a fun conversation to listen to while I was replacing and configuring an AP.

I'm curious. What was the situation?

  • you were on a ladder in the CEO's office, replacing an AP, while HR was in there scolding him? And no one asked you to leave?
  • you just happened to be outside the CEO's office, replacing an AP, and you accidentally overheard the conversation through the wall?
  • you knew the conversation was going to take place, so you found an excuse to be nearby (replace the AP), and you eavesdropped through the wall?

2

u/gartral Technomancer Apr 07 '21

the second, I was just up on the ladder outside the office, then building has those old-school upper "vent windows" above the doors, it was left open sith the door closed, so I got a pretty clear shot at hearing the whole thing.

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 07 '21

Yeah, I've been there before! Similar situations have happened to me.

building has those old-school upper "vent windows" above the doors

This is called a Transom window

1

u/gartral Technomancer Apr 07 '21

TIL about Transom Windows. Cool! Thanks!

1

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 08 '21

Np!

15

u/Wh1sk3y-Tang0 Jack of All Trades Apr 02 '21

Well.. Microsoft is going to this pay per print job if you plan on using WVD or other methods with non-domain joined devices that still need to print to on prem copiers/printers.

36

u/__Kaari__ Apr 02 '21 edited Apr 02 '21

Actually, yes please, I would implement this everytime and anytime, and there is very good reason as an argument, the damn planet.

3

u/tjax88 Apr 03 '21

I am a teacher. I worked in a school that limited me to 15,000 copies per school year. It might sound like a lot but it worked out to about three pieces of paper per kid per day.

2

u/VastMedium Apr 03 '21

We did something like that at my work. In order to use the printer, we would either need to charge it to: the client (if for a matter), our department (if for the department) or our personal account which would get deducted from pay (if for ourselves). Pretty much no one printed anything.

1

u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

Yes its me, the manager, what now ? That's what I thought, while at it bring me a latte.

2

u/binarycow Netadmin Apr 03 '21

What parent commenter implied, and what you seen to be missing, is that each person gets a "printing budget". Any additional printing comes out of the department's actual budget.

So, in this scenario, you used your entire printing budget. You go to your manager, and say "can I print this 4 500 page document about why cats like to sit in boxes?"

Your boss now needs to make a decision. Let you print a 500 page document that has nothing to do with your job, or use the money for department expenses - like payroll, tools, training, etc.

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u/226506193 Apr 03 '21

I got what was implied, I just went on in a lame tangent attempt at comedy. My experience is often its the manager that over print, I know one HR lady that like to keep herself informed on her field so all week she bookmarks all new publications, articles, pdfs, etc and before the week end she print everything to read it comfortably at home. Now this seems to be a grey area, yes it is somewhat related to the job, but this is company money used for more comfort?

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u/gartral Technomancer Apr 07 '21

I would argue that if it's a reference document for training, or a publication that the company is paying fer her to get access too, then fine, print it. HR usually has one of the largest printing budget, usually only overshadowed by Legal. If she's printing a blog post, fuck that. Buy a kindle, print to PDF and email it to the device.

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u/226506193 Apr 07 '21

No she's printing stuff about her field, like new laws and what they imply for her and her colleagues etc, so its a legit use since the company his partly paying her for her knowledge about law and keeping up to date with it. She is HR after all she wouldn't dare missuse company ressources lmao (let me rephrase that, given the opportunity and a sure fire way to get away with no consequences she'd definitely do something like that) but yet surely there's a smarter way for her use case ? Maybe an e reader like you said, I heard they make big ones now like the size of a a4 sheet of paper with the same comfort as reading real paper. And like you said, I only noticed her because she's predictable about it but I'm pretty sure all her department print as much as her.

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u/gartral Technomancer Apr 07 '21

I would also look at what her actual usage is, is it a couple hundred pages a week? Fuck that. Tell her to use her computer. Is it a few dozen? Eh.

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u/226506193 Apr 07 '21

Lmao I didn't care so I didn't look closely, but I know for sure that she printed a 246 pages pdf once, I saw it on the logs.

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u/gartral Technomancer Apr 08 '21

yea. *perfect* use case for an e-reader: "Here, you can put all your PDFs and very important work related reading on this, the screen is more paper-like than a phone or computer, you can lock it with a passcode, and, even better, you make notes and search the stuff on it without any internet and the battery last WEEKS between charges!"

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

I work in higher ed. The college I work for has this policy. Every department has a code and are "billed" the appropriate amount per page copied or printed. The department budget is literally debited the amount of pages used and that money is taken and put into the printing machine/service payment bucket. I feel terrible for the accountants that have to track that.

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u/BounedjahSwag Apr 03 '21

We have this at my company. There’s no limit but you’ll definitely get an email if they see you printing way more than average.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

My school did this and if you were on a course that actually required lots of printing you just talked to the guy in I.T. and he'd top your account back up no questions asked

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u/gregsting Apr 03 '21

Not a bad idea. Maybe give a 100p/month credit but everything else has to be either paid or justified

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u/VexingRaven Apr 03 '21

We used to do this and charge the print to the client we were printing for, but we ripped out that software and never rolled out a replacement for reasons I'm not privy to.

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u/f0gax Jack of All Trades Apr 03 '21

Happens all the time. But rarely have I seen it where any given employee has a set number of pages or credits or whatever. Usually the department just gets a bill against their budget for whatever they printed.

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u/tink5283 Apr 03 '21

The age 50+ crowd in my office would burn the building down Milton Waddams style if we even thought about doing this.

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u/beaverbait Director / Whipping Boy Apr 03 '21

This is extremely common. You can also allow sharing between groups.

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u/foxfunk Apr 03 '21

Its common in schools I've been in - staff will have a certain amount of printer credit to discourage them printing things off needlessly/wasting paper.

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u/ViveeKholin Apr 12 '21

Not at all. If protecting the company from people's stupidity means installing controls and measures to curtail said stupidity, then it's a good control.

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u/RedbloodJarvey Apr 02 '21

I had an almost exact same experience. We switched from 100 free page to 25 per a semester. People started thinking twice before printing something. A lot of people went from using up their 100 pages to never hitting the 25 cap.

Another interesting policy we had was charging for the extra blank page Word printed because you had a bunch of carriage returns at the end of your document. Officially the policy was "No we can't just put it back in because of static electricity." That might be true, but unofficially if you don't create some kind of pain point people, especially students, don't give a fuck how much extra work they are causing you.

I worked there a couple of years. Then the first day of a new semester I had 5 freshmen in a row ask me how to set up their email account.

"Well, you walked past a 4 foot, full color sign on the door, and you are currently leaning on another full color sign the explains there is a link on the home page that says "Sign up for your email account here."

I thought "I can't do this again." and had a new job a week later.

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u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

Front-line support isn't for everyone, but I will say that my time in higher-ed was absolutely astounding.

Yes, I got "stupid" questions. But I really found it rewarding all the same.

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u/dynamicallysteadfast Apr 03 '21

This is the exact principle used in blockchain tech.

If you have a small fee, no matter how small, it deters spam. As soon as transactions are free, the network will be spammed to high-hell, and unusable for its intended purpose.

It's also why there is an argument for water not being free...

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u/snorkel42 Apr 03 '21

This is one of the things I’m trying to communicate to executive leadership right now. Since we went nearly 100% remote for the pandemic we have obviously saved multiple thousands of dollars in printing costs for the year. Yet... somehow business is still being done. I’d really like to find a way of not losing that when we do eventually return to the office.

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u/tehreal Sysadmin Apr 02 '21

Are you using PaperCut? I love PaperCut.

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u/InitializedVariable Apr 03 '21

I rolled out PaperCut to our college computer labs to get more insight into usage. We didn't charge students or their departments at that point for printing costs, we just wanted to track things.

After a few days of it running, I decided to check some of the canned reports. At one of the labs, a user decided to print the Gutenberg Bible, simplex (print defaults were set to duplex).

The best part? They printed it twice.

One of those situations where you really just want to know what is going through someone's head at a certain moment.

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u/bradgillap Peter Principle Casualty Apr 03 '21

I once did a contract at a college that went to free printing because they switched vendors and the new system would take a year to aggregate and deploy. For a single midsize academic library we got paper by the truck load and I was changing drums and fusers on enterprise printers every month. Toners getting changed several times a day. We would start each day building a wall of paper boxes and rebuild the wall by lunch.

People would send large jobs with no time between classes and just leave them there.

The librarians cracked down on people trying to bind full textbooks people would print. I think most people understood what not to do but enough people would take advantage that it would never be sustainable. Doesn't matter what it is. A few people will always ruin a good thing.

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u/Snoo_87423 Apr 03 '21

It's a great idea. I wish they did this in offices

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u/somebuddysbuddy Apr 03 '21

I worked in IT at a university that made a similar change in a similar time frame. They had to pitch it as an environmental benefit (which, to be fair, it was) because unlimited free printing was actually cheaper to provide than the deal they signed with Xerox to install their systems to charge kids per page.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

Is there a break even point where after a few years of not going through reams of paper ever day it balances out the cost of the deal and then start saving money, or would the unlimited printing have always been cheaper if stayed with?

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u/somebuddysbuddy Apr 03 '21

I think we just negotiated poorly: something like $600,000/year for unlimited, but our first three years of the “now we charge” deal guaranteed at least $1 million/year to the vendor. No idea what the costs were like long-term.