Printer

Offices are little micro environments where the megalomaniac personalities of some create a macro chaos. Irrational bosses are often a source of trouble, or a problematic coworker, but it also happens that the secretary (who insists on being called "Assistant") who has a boss complex creates problems of sizes otherwise unbelievable. In here we've had an assistant such - let's call her Norma - who for a while had the support of a director, and thus applied her very personal reign of terror. She made it her work to check on everybody's entry and leaving time, buying on the office budget quite expensive equipment to keep tags on people. Money has flown quite freely regarding supplies for the secretaries, new laptops, laptop bags, snacks for the director and so on. Then, suddenly costs had to be cut (there was never a report indicating what was the budget and what was the amount spent on "trouble areas"), and said cuts got to the printers. This was bad because there was only one big printer - the one she used - and everybody else had small printers on their desks - even her. It was decided that nobody would get any more supplies for the printers - but the printers weren't even removed from our desks and our care, and sent to someone who could use them. Nobody was told in advance, so that we could use the printers as much as we could, but simply one day we weren't given any more ink or paper.

We all had to print at the big printers, except her who kept her desk printer. Oh well, we did, and a lot of problems came out of that. Paper went out way too fast, people took away other people's printed documents, some threw them away, others just gathered there forgotten... and soon there was much more printing than before, add to it, with a much more expensive printer.

Then the director recently got retired, but it's like Norma never got the memo. As if still empowered by the director, she continued her dictatorial rantings, going then to the point where she banned everybody from the printers and decided that only the secretaries will print. She, of course, didn't say a thing, she just had it done, so over night important documents couldn't be printed out because there was no printing! The reason? There's a lot of people printing personal stuff on the office printers, and the costs are high.

This time the office reacted furiously sending out e-mails about the measure, and who does she think she is to make such decisions, not talking it over with nobody and not informing anyone of her decisions. She bicthed back saying that costs need to be cut and a lot of people abuse of the printer. Now really? She's the first to print out every silly, personal thing she has, she uses the company vehicles and the driver to run her personal errands... and now you can't print out a note because it might be personal?

From the quarrel it came out that she plans to buy a software that allows her to identify who prints what and so have an idea of what is the printer being used for, and who are the ones printing the most. Dude, with the desk printers EVERYBODY HAS you have that without buying a software. You simply count how much paper and ink people is requesting. That simple.

It's just amazin how there's people who love to bitch about the others and control them, but can't control themselves.