Early morning phone call dealing with someone who insisted that our department printer isn’t printing.
I don’t “deal” with printers, not my problem, not my department and not my job. But somehow they had gotten hold of my direct desk line “because it was an emergency.”
Apparently I once managed to fix the printer by plugging the power cord in to the wall. And our company-wide IT department is notoriously slow at fixing problems with standing equipment, i.e. printers and copiers. “Just go to another printer” is their usual response.
I sent a job to the printer from my laptop and it ran fine. I did the usual tricks when I got to the person’s desk, you know, like reading the actual #$!%ing error message.
“I filled it this morning.” the person assured me.
“Well it’s out of paper for your print job, the paper tray you need is empty, the printer is flashing a light on it right now, I can see it from here, that is telling you it is out of paper for that job, the message on the LCD would no doubt be telling you the same thing if we went over there, and the printer queue on Windows is telling you it is out of that type of paper for that job.”
“Where are you reading that?” they asked.
I pointed. “Here, here and… here.”
“Oh… I’ve never noticed those messages before. I filled the printer this morning.”
I’m patient.
“Sure, but you didn’t fill the tray that you are trying to print from.”
“Does that matter?” they asked “It has the paper, right? You would think the printer would tell me if it didn’t have the right paper.”
“It is telling you it doesn’t have the right paper for what you’re trying to do, that’s what this error message is. That’s why it won’t print.”
We loaded the paper…
But I neglected to cancel all the queued jobs. I’ll let them figure out why they’ve run out of printer credits.