Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Memo to the people in the office who use the common printer

Colleagues,

Thanks to our office renovation, I have been unfortunate enough to sit near the office printer for the past week. I have been told that the renovations are going to go for a few more weeks, which means that I’ll have to be at this seat for longer than expected. So to keep myself sane, and to prevent office violence, I have drawn up a few helpful guidelines:-

Here are few things which I don’t know:

  • The reason why the paper is jammed
  • The reason why the printer used blue ink instead of red
  • The person who cancelled your print job when it was halfway through
  • The person who took away your son’s class project
  • Your colleague’s phone extension
  • The phone extension for the IT team
  • Whether IT or ADMIN are responsible for the upkeep of the printer
  • What the score is or who won the match or any other variation thereof

Here are a few things which I will not do:

  • Vacate my workstation so that you can login to yours no matter how many successive hours you have been in the office and might miss your cab back home if you don’t hurry
  • Call your extension when your thousand page document has been printed
  • Give you a missed call when the IT guy “finally shows up” even if you haven’t had anything to eat since morning and all you want to do is grab a bite because you are feeling a little faint and/or suffer from hypoglycaemia

Here are a few things which do not fall under my job description:

  • To tell you that you need to use blue paper if you want to take your printed document out of the office premises
  • Send IT an email when the printer runs out of paper
  • Arbitrate between both the IT and ADMIN teams to determine who holds responsibility for the printer
  • Arbitrate between two people to determine who gets to use the printer first
  • To judge whether your wedding card looks better in black & white or colour
  • Lending you my seat in absentia while you wait for your print job. This transgression will force me to change my chair with yours.

Here are a few topics of conversation which do not interest me:

  • Any office gossip even if it so juicy that you cannot keep it a secret
  • To educate you about what I am “currently working on”
  • The fact that your previous employer had state-of-the-art laser printers and the management of your current employer is made up of “cheap bastards” 
  • Any complaint regarding other people using the printer to print frivolous documents hence monopolizing and wasting the company’s resources
  • The fact that you crashed the print server by continuously hitting the print button. Also, I do not find the said action amusing.

Please follow these guidelines to ensure a peaceful working environment, failing which I cannot be held responsible for missing sheets or the appearance of extra pages in your handout to the CEO containing pictures that suspiciously resemble buttocks or other non-business ends.

Thanks in advance. 

Best,

__________________

 

(Disclaimer: No printers were hurt during the writing of this memo.)

(with inputs from Daddy San)

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