Maybe it IS Just Me

[kaasirpent]

Let's play a little role-playing game, shall we?

You're standing at a printer in an office. In the output tray of said printer is your copious printout. A one-page job prints while you're collecting your pages. It falls into the output tray atop your stuff. Do you:

1. take your stuff and leave the newly printed one in the output tray for the person who printed it;


2. take your stuff and the new one, with the intent to deliver it to the person who printed it, thereby saving them a walk to the printer;


3. pay no attention to the new page, grabbing it and everything else with the intent to throw anything that's not yours away—if it was important, they'll print it again; or


4. take the sheet that just printed while you were standing there and toss it into the recycle bin.

Please choose one.

Conversation I just had:

[I approach the printer, which is at the opposite end of a long room full of cubes. I can see the crossing hallway all the way from my cube to the printer. No one passes in any direction on my way to the printer.]

Me: <approaches printer, glances at output tray, finds it empty>

Me, to woman at printer whom I'll call "Jane": "I think you must have grabbed my—"

Jane: "I put it over there." <gestures without even looking at me>

Me: <looks where she's pointing>

[15 feet from the printer is a tray where 'abandoned' printouts are put for recycling. The sheet I literally just printed before walking the 30 seconds to the printer is glinting on top of the pile.]

Me, in reality: <grabs it, walks to desk, grumbling>

Me, in my head: "You idiot. Did it not occur to you that the person who literally just printed that might have every intention of actually coming to pick it up, and expect to find it in the output tray instead of the recycle bin where stuff from yesterday that no one picked up is sitting? Did it? GAH!"

Honestly, what the hell is wrong with people? It literally had to have printed while she was standing at the printer, because I would have seen her approaching the thing as I walked up if she hadn't already been there. So she had to actually go through the thought process of, "Someone printed something just now. It's on top of my stuff, which is important. I'll just toss it in the recycle pile."

IS IT JUST ME, OR IS THAT CLINICALLY INSANE?

I'm getting less and less tolerant of this kind of thing. I don't know what it is, lately, but people and their stupid bullshit are getting under my skin in major ways. The fact that "Jane" is three layers above me in the organization is all that kept me from saying something, but I've been fuming since.

[And once again, I disclaim this because people assume every time I say anything negative that I hate my job: I do not in any way hate my job. I hate people, and people also work at my job. Study the difference very carefully.]

Comments

[bloomchen.livejournal.com]

There are only six people in our office. If something prints and it's not yours, we typically tend to leave it on top of our copier/printer combo unit until days later and one of us ends up recyling it if it doesn't have a name on it (like an email).

And I hear you about other people. It's like common sense and common courtesy exist no more.

eee-dee-ots

[oneeyeddaruma.livejournal.com]

So... now you should add a first page to everything you print. Centered, bold, all caps... "LEAVE THIS ALONE IF IT ISN'T YOURS, YOU SELFISH TURNIP."

[siercia]

either 1 or 2, depending on if I can identify who it belonged to and if their desk is on the way back to my desk.

Occasionally, I'll flip it right side up and leave it next to the printer instead. Generally don't throw it out, no.

[kaasirpent]

Because you have common sense.

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

We used to have a printer that would print things as soon as it got them, instead of putting them in a queue. It led to a lot of confusion and people flipping through 80 pages of Job 1, to find Job 2 in between pages 56 and 57.

[oneeyeddaruma.livejournal.com]

Oh... maybe this has a modicum of pertinence: I once worked in an expansive cube farm - nay, plantation - and my designated printer was a good hike away from my desk. The printer had a function that allowed you to lock the print until you got to the printer and entered a password you'd designated at your desk. This was especially helpful whenever I printed something I shouldn't have... which was everything. Maybe you have that. I'd have mentioned it before, but that particular job is a memory buried very, very deep.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Good grief. I've encountered that sort of inconsideration in only two places.

Many years ago, working at an "Investment Firm", there were two factors in play; the brokers were always in a hurry, and many would just grab the *entire output trayful* in a sort of hit-and-run attack, presumably then discarding anything that wasn't their precious output... this coincided fairly often with intentional sabotage and spying on their 'fellow' brokers. Everyone *else* in the office just suffered in the crossfire.

Considerably more recently, I escaped from a place with a seriously bad case of "me manager, you worker", where *there were cover sheets showing who had printed things and when* and they'd instantly throw them away anyway... out of general inconsideration on the 'regular' printer, and out of some kind of pissing contest on the color one (chosen as an alternate whenever people were sending hundred-page output to the other) because "you aren't allowed to use the color printer"... when actually we just weren't supposed to print in color (since readable complex documentation for facilities wiring and design took valuable color toner away from management's pretty soundbite-and-bulletpoint handouts, an admittedly separate bit of insanity).

You're asking for a level of consideration and kindness that is utterly missing past a certain point of corporate heirarchy.

[kaasirpent]

I'd settle for sanity.