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So over the last two day’s I have been observing some very odd behaviour with my users.

Now I have just put in a Toshiba all in one, everybody saw it come in and emails have done the rounds, explaining that it will be replacing the old mono and colour printers.

The all in one has been placed were the old colour printer was, the old colour printer has been moved to the side and has replaced the mono. The mono has been moved to a cabinet in front of my desk. Both the old printers are waiting to be moved, the mono I have connected again, to give people a chance to phase over (This should not be necessary but lets face it, mot of the time it is).

Now my mind has been blown by past 48 hours. Sitting just in front of the printers I have seen nearly every print get collected. Nearly every single person has walked over to the old colour printer (currently were the old mono was) They have been extremely confused that the print is not coming out. I have left some of them to it and they spent an incredible amount of time, trying to work out why their print is not coming out.

Now the old colour is obviously turned off, also it’s A3, white and about 3 foot tall. The mono is dark grey, A4 and was on a giant black trolly. Not to mention it’s in the field of view still.

How on earth can 80% of people not notice the difference? It’s enough of them to make me believe that those who did notice are the exception and that it must be normal behaviour.

21 Spice ups
2

They’re on autopilot.

Coffee deprivation.

Zombies.

Droids.

Work has dulled their senses to the point that they are just going thru the motion.

5 Spice ups
3

pebkac.

4

I would have to say that they’re just dumb.

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5

How many support tickets have you had so far saying the printer is broken? :slight_smile:

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6

We took an old printer offline and replaced it with a new one, but I got busy and left the old printer driver on the print server for a week. I sent out a mass email to let people know about the change. When I got around to removing it from the print server, there were about a hundred print jobs in the queue, and most of them were repeat jobs. People would send the print, not see it in the (obviously new) printer’s tray, then send the job a few more times for good measure before remembering that we had a new printer.

Strange things, indeed.

7

People get so ingrained in their routine that they can’t adapt to the slightest change. They rather bang away at a printer that is clearly off instead of saying hmm this one doesn’t work let me print to the one that does.

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They’re too busy to have to think…

9

I’ll never understand it. When I print a page, and it doesn’t show up, I either try to figure out what happened, or if i’m in a hurry I just print to another printer. I have users who will send the job over and over again for an hour before they give up and finally call me. It never occurs to them to use another printer.

1 Spice up
10

When you’re a stranger, faces look ugly, when you’re alone. Women seem wicked, when you’re unwanted, streets are that you got when you’re down.

3 Spice ups
11

Most people don’t read emails, especially if they’re from IT. LOL I’ve run into similar situations before with printers and things before where it seems like no one read anything. :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
12

It’s the same reason why people rapid-fire press elevator buttons. It unlocks the secret skip-every-other-floor mode. If they print the documents enough time, it should either move them right up to the front of the queue, or have a placebo effect once you fix the error and the job prints…

13

How about PEBCAW? (Problem Exists Between Copier And Wall)

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They probably noticed, but were too embarrassed to say anything, thinking the problem was them.

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People are probably too afraid to ask how to set the new printer as their default printer. Was the instructions provided with your notification email?

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We have a few departments who purchased one of their own printers (with no service contract), thus they have to order toner for them directly. Every month one of these rogues runs out of toner and goes off-line for a week (who needs spares?), and we have to clear the queue before they fire it back up, or they then run out of paper (and come see us anyway)…

17

#1 People don’t read your emails

#2 People glaze over and think about other things when IT talks to them in person, unless it’s a problem with their personal device and they really “need the information”.

You aren’t alone, this happens to me with some users too.