The Trick to Printing Dirty
The office can sometimes be a fast-paced environment (that’s at least what we describe it to be in our resumes). Why let your printers and co-workers slow you down? This is not your average printer tricks for the home office geared to save paper and extend the life of your printer cartridge. Instead, this article is here to provide a few dirty tricks to get your print jobs done faster, albeit you may lose some friends in the process.
- Canceling another co-worker’s print job. That’s right. Most commercial printers allow you to bring up a list of current print jobs in-place. There is always that one person in the office who has an error while printing that causes all kinds of delays. Next time your standing by the printer and you notice nothing is happening, try finding the process list and canceling the jobs ahead of you. In a rush? Boss needs copies for the big meeting ASAP? Cancel all the jobs ahead of you and don’t think twice. Always remember, it’s survival of the fittest in cubicle life.
- Print Next. If canceling another co-worker’s print job is too harsh, there is always the option to simply skip the queue and print next. This is a sneaky way to skip ahead of a long line and get your papers faster. No one will notice and no will care. This is definitely the nicer way to get the copies faster instead of canceling another co-worker’s print job. Most commercial printers have this option.
- Switch A Roo. Out of paper? Don’t want to walk to the supply closet to find more? Guess what, tray two usually has the 8.5″ x 11″ paper that you need. A normal commercial printer will have two trays for 8.5″ x 11″ to print in different formats. The second format is never really used. Grab paper from tray two and move it to tray one when you are in a bind. The office will thank you later.
- Waste Toner. Waste toner is normally discarded toner from the printer (when you print, not all off the toner goes on the page, and the rest is discarded to a waste toner tank or bottle; credit fixya). This creates a fun error when you are rushing to print some paper. Most people will wait for the office manager to handle this mighty error. Rather than wait, simply take out the waste toner, give a nice puff of air into the cartridge, and place it back into the printer. Although this is temporary, the printer will continue to finish the print job. This is the whole point of “printing dirty”.
- Walk Away. At the end of the day when all else fails, walk away. Printer error lights blinking? Walk away. Major printer jam? Walk away. Out of 11″ x 17″ paper and you need to print in legal? Walk away. Just make sure you don’t get caught. This is what separates the amateurs from the professionals in the cubical kingdom.
Do you have any tips on printing dirty? Send them to admin@thecollaredsheep.com!
1) Abandon the inkjet entirely and play in the sand.
2) Give up office life and make lamps from the company ink cartridges.
4) Print documents in your own blood if replacing the cartridge is too much hassle.
3) Pray.
I had no idea there was an entire blog on printing.
Just under 2 dozen by my count, in fact.