paper thieves!
Mar. 7th, 2006 08:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
knittinggoddess.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
techrecoveryA minor part of our job (tech support at a college campus, where I'm a senior) is to make sure the dorm printers have paper. One hall is having a problem with paper mysteriously disappearing, and the dorm mom has taken to buying paper because she did not know that she could just call us for more. Seriously: I put a new ream next to a full printer on Thursday, and ALL of it was gone by Monday. The dorm holds maybe 80 students and there were no paper deadlines to my knowledge.
One of my coworkers suggested taping a note to the inside of the paper tray (just inside the lip, where it hopefully wouldn't interact with any machinery) that just said HONOR PRINCIPLE. (Our college is big on the honor principle, although obviously its efficacy varies.) Or maybe STOP STEALING PAPER YOU FUCK.
Short of padlocking the tray or making the poor dorm mom hold onto the extra reams, any ideas?
Also, on my last printer walk, I found half a ream of inkjet paper sitting next to the laser printer. I flipped out and gave a short lecture to the kids in the social room, but I doubt they were responsible. AUGH. Maybe we need signs that warn of how the paper might MELT in the super hot laser printer and gum everything up.
Guys, call us if you're out. And look, there is a REAM OF PAPER RIGHT THERE. USE IT. But don't take it all to your room and, I don't know, use it as rolling paper.
One of my coworkers suggested taping a note to the inside of the paper tray (just inside the lip, where it hopefully wouldn't interact with any machinery) that just said HONOR PRINCIPLE. (Our college is big on the honor principle, although obviously its efficacy varies.) Or maybe STOP STEALING PAPER YOU FUCK.
Short of padlocking the tray or making the poor dorm mom hold onto the extra reams, any ideas?
Also, on my last printer walk, I found half a ream of inkjet paper sitting next to the laser printer. I flipped out and gave a short lecture to the kids in the social room, but I doubt they were responsible. AUGH. Maybe we need signs that warn of how the paper might MELT in the super hot laser printer and gum everything up.
Guys, call us if you're out. And look, there is a REAM OF PAPER RIGHT THERE. USE IT. But don't take it all to your room and, I don't know, use it as rolling paper.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:04 am (UTC)I'll pitch that at the next meeting.
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Date: 2006-03-08 05:09 am (UTC)Also, making talk about the paper supply running low, and the campus may be starting to ask students to supply their own (works if management is involed with the scheme), helps is working wonders in stopping the thief.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:18 am (UTC)Time to start a "Inventory" of equipment in the dorms and their rooms for unusuall happenings.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:15 am (UTC)I'm not sure they belonged in the position of authority.
...also one day when I was NOT working, someone caught a printer on fire when she put in a new toner cartridge without pulling out the long plastic ribbon.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:17 am (UTC)Seriously, it's not THAT hard to change the cartridge.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:19 am (UTC)Although I am paraphrasing the labelling very slightly.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:23 am (UTC)Then again, if you want to talk about stupid, hear stories that chem and physics lab TAs tell. Those are horrifying. Spilling HCl onto bare feet (who the hell wears sandals to ochem lab?), letting glassware boil dry when it subsequently breaks, heating closed systems...oh god.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:26 am (UTC)No, seriously. I do.
Then again, at the doctor's office where I work today, the guy they brought in from a prison was mad they wouldn't uncuff him when he went to go to bathroom, so he peed on himself in our hallway.
I'll take stupid college students, thanks.
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Date: 2006-03-08 06:27 am (UTC)A friend of mine is a paramedic student and is currently on his ER rotations. College students are much more intelligent and reasonable than the people he meets. Acksfjdslkjdfas.
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Date: 2006-03-08 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:21 am (UTC)Her printout just looked like poor quality, but he (for some reason) made another printout onto laser paper and that came out covered with plastic crap.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 06:30 am (UTC)And the glossy stuff would be bad.
The kind I generally use is the same as copy paper, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 07:26 am (UTC)Metal cages with padlocks? How do you retrieve the jobs?
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Date: 2006-03-08 07:56 am (UTC)Basically the cages are designed so that the place where the paper comes out is easily accessable - the drawer where the paper is stored is firmly IN-accessable.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 07:58 am (UTC)Ok, I can see the cages now. Not a bad idea although it sucks that you guys have had to go to such drastic measures.
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Date: 2006-03-08 08:01 am (UTC)Which works against them as wejust give them the worst equipment so it doesn't matter so much when its stolen or broken.
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Date: 2006-03-08 09:10 am (UTC)And it's not just the US, this was in England. In NZ, we didn't even put temptation in their way - the printers were loaded up with those 5000 sheet bins that were topped up morning and night and then locked. If they wanted paper during business hours, fine. If it was late, tough luck.
In England, we ended up storing the paper in a locked room, and we also implemented a print-charging system - 5p per page was enough of a disincentive to print out those porn pictures to take home (b&w printsouts of colour pics - some people are so tacky).
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 02:20 pm (UTC)You guys are awfully generous to even put a printer in dorms. Our policy is bring your own for your room or don't print at all.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 02:53 pm (UTC)At one point during summer conference season (the college hosts conferences in the dorms to make up summer upkeep costs), we had a group of teachers who were printing all of their class materials on our printers. After we put the kibosh on that, due to running of paper and toner every few days, they would try to sneak over the desk and grab the paper off the printer tray before the desk clerk could stop them. *holds head in hands* TEACHERS. I expected more from them.
The final solution was to remove the paper from the printer and have them come to the desk, approve their print job, and pay for it before printing. It's hard-assed, but it works.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:30 pm (UTC)You pay 5¢ per page, automatically deducted from your account when you print, and you have to buy these "e-tokens" in advance. All our printers are in big metal boxes (they're huge HP Laserjets - 8150s and 8550s). They're vented to let heat out, and have an opening in the top to get to the output tray. Master locks to open them up and fill paper and toner.
The only exceptions are at monitored locations (we have two, one in the Library and the other in the Student Union) where you can pay using Paper Tokens - you buy those in advance and exchange them for your prints. Jobs hit a queue and have to be manually released by the attendant when you come to claim your job. This is also the only way to get jobs printed on paper other than 8 1/2 x 11 white, and the only way to use the plotters.
Its kind of hard-ass now that I outlined it like that, but it seems normal to me, after being here for 5 years.
On an unrealted note, I'm guessing that reality and sobriety are your only delusions?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 09:01 pm (UTC)Yes, yes they are! Bonus points for you!
We charge $0.10 a page, but everyone gets 200 free pages a year (color printing is more). Anything above that gets charged to your student account. Oddly enough, when I took classes at a community college, you paid like $15 for a computer account and then all your printing was free, no matter how much you printed.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 09:20 pm (UTC)Actually, that $15 deal sounds pretty good to me. We can't really do that though - logins are the same as our email accounts, so everyone at the University has one.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 05:51 pm (UTC)I did that job for a couple of years. Short of doing pay-for –print there is no way to stop the little twerps from snitching paper. I ended up using the candy-factory method, I kept a record of what each dorm was using and put just a little more out each cycle. Eventually the usage tapered off and I was able to approach the dorm RAs when I saw spikes.
We finally go them, took all the PCs out of the dorms and replaced them with SunRay terminals W/O printers.
HA!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 11:09 pm (UTC)Why is it that the one thing that would actually fucking work is always automatically ruled out?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 11:12 pm (UTC)And partly because my boss is a softie and wants to try less drastic measures first. (We also let seniors keep stacks of books in the computer labs, although the stacks must be out of the way and will get moved if they're there for too long.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-08 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 01:55 am (UTC)Yoicks. Actually, Kymster had a laser printer ruined by the little crotchdroppings of an ex-roommate, when they tried to run a t-shirt transfer through it. $600 (in 1995 money) to fix it.