I am the self proclaimed "Bullpen Printer Fixer-Upper Guru"

For the third time in about a month, I've had to fix the local printer that serves the bullpen area.

The first two times, the printer settings were messed up so that it took like 10 seconds to print one page. (the printer says it can print 46 pages per minute, but it was taking forever to print a single document) The fix was easy, as I just had to go into the printer settings and set the default paper type. Somehow the paper was set at cardstock, so the printer was taking longer to prepare to print, since cardstock acts differently than regular paper.

Yesterday I fixed the printer again. This time, I'm not too sure what the problem was, all I know is that the printer said it was online and ready to print, but when you tried to print, nothing would happen. Now I'm not too sure if I'm really all that qualified to call myself a Guru, or if it's just that everyone else in the bullpen (and the greater printer area) are just too lazy to attempt to fix the printer themselves.

See, let me tell a bit of the printer back story for context, at about 10:00 I can recall D saying that the printer wasn't working. A dialog between D and Shane resulted in the two of them concluding that the printer wasn't working. At about 10:45, I tried to print a document... and nothing came out of the printer. So during that 45 minute interval between the printer first malfunctioning and me trying to print something, nobody did anything to try and fix the printer. So I decided to do a little investigating to see if I could find out the problem... I thought about calling the IT people to tell them the printer wasn't working, but the IT guys are usually pretty slow at getting back about problems, and I figured it would be quicker for me to try and fix the problem myself. So I opened up my control panel and took a look at the printer settings. When I opened the printer queue I saw 17 documents that were waiting to be printed. 17 Documents!! Now that means that over the course of the 45 minutes from when the printer stopped working and the time that I had a look at it, there were 17 instances of someone trying to print something and noticing that the printer wasn't working. There were about 6 print jobs of the same document from the same person. I don't know about you, but if I tried to print something 6 times and noticed it wasn't working, I would call someone to try and fix the problem. But no, there were 17 instances and NOBODY did anything to try and fix the problem. If that isn't work laziness then I don't know what is.

So anyway, I noticed at the top of the print queue list was the document from D that had caused the initial error. I attempted to delete the print job, but was not authorized (since I didn't send it to the printer). So I got D to delete his print job and noticed that the next print job in line provided an error too. To find a possible solution to the problem, I ran the troubleshooter wizard on my computer and came up with a possible solution to turn off the printer, wait 10 seconds and then turn it back on. I tried this solution and amazingly it worked, the printer sprung to life and spit out all 17 of the documents that were waiting in the queue (including 6 copies of the same document.)

So I guess what this story all boils down to is that I'm the only one in the printer area that will do anything to try and fix the problems. I think that should qualify me for a promotion or something.