Two universal events that guarantee printer failure.

Any design firm (engineering, architectural, etc.) will tell you that there are two events that, when they occur, will guarantee your printer will fail.  These events are:

1. A hard deadline.
2. The repair tech visited the day before.


You have all experienced these things. It never fails. You could use the printer all week and nothing happens. But when it comes time to print your drawing set for a submittal and there is a hard deadline it will jam, run out of toner, run out of paper, shred your paper, or catch fire. It always happens.  Always.

photo credit: jtyerse via photopin cc  

Many veterans have learned to dread the unsolicited visit of the printer repair tech; not because they smell of old toner, but because of the waft of destruction that typically comes in their wake. You know the drill; they show up to clean out the toner tray, perform a routine cleaning, or to get a counter read. The next day the printer seemingly dies. No reason given; no warning; it simply refuses to work properly. My personal favorite is when the tech comes to repair a broken printer, runs 50 gazillion prints (or your paper) and signs off as if everything was actually ok. Within minutes of them leaving the darn thing is now hiccupping where it was sneezing before.

In all fairness to the repair techs we work the snot out of these devices. We run them super hot and run print after print after print. Nobody would work in a consistent manner under these extreme circumstances. Not without breaking down. But at least now we don’t have to endure the wretched smell of ammonia these days! Oh the memories.