IT·Science Talk

Every lab has exactly one printer and it hates all of us personally

Our department has dozens of researchers, a few million in equipment, and one shared printer that has been 'offline' in a different way every week since I started.

This week it printed the first page of my grant report, then 40 pages of strange symbols, then stopped and asked for a paper size that doesn't exist. IT says it's 'working as expected'. I believe them. I think this is what it expects.

Are workplace printers bad everywhere, or is it just academia? Share your printer war stories.