There are few things capable of irritating office employees more than printers that refuse to play ball.

In the running we have; losing a vital email, pointless meetings and a sluggish laptop, but actually, the winner might just be the printer that decides to continually chew up the report your boss has asked for.

As employee annoyances go, bad printers rank highly, and we bet you’ve encountered at least one of the following complaints:

1) “The printer in sales has jammed - again!”

The employee has tried new paper, new cartridges and has even resorted to removing the paper tray and blowing into the innards of the device in a vain attempt to stop it jamming.

But nothing works. It just keeps chewing those pages. And the rage keeps building.

2) “My iPad can’t find the printer!”

It shows how far we’ve come when we expect instant printing of documents from handheld sheets of glass without a wire in sight.

But when the bluetooth or WiFi connection between a mobile or tablet device and a printer disappears without trace, expect the employee in question to spend the rest of the day cursing modern technology.

3) “I wanted the ink on the page - not my new shirt!”

Printing can be a messy business at times - particularly when you have to deal with a faulty cartridge.

No one expects to undertake a trip to the dry cleaners or be forced to take a shower after a print job, do they?

4) “I don’t know what ‘duplex’ means. I just want to print this on both sides of the paper!”

Modern printer interfaces should feel as familiar as your smartphone. Those that are yet to dispense with technical printing jargon and acronyms from the dot matrix era are sure to annoy their colleagues. 

5) “I had to wait fifteen minutes to collect my report from the printer this morning - that’s why I’m late!”

Waiting in line for a print job isn’t much fun - especially if the person at the front doesn't really know what they're doing, or worse, they're printing 300 colour sheets of paper... on the wrong printer!

Inevitably, by the time you get to the front, the ink will have run out, too.

6) “My beautiful spreadsheet has been ruined!”

Sarah spent ages on those tables and pie charts, and the front cover of the report was meant to sparkle with brand colours and design flare.

So, why has the printer decided to instead smudge all of the colour across the page, turning her brilliant report into a colourful mess and wasted ink?

Why the answer might lie in managed print services

If the above complaints have landed on your desk far too often, managed print services might be the answer.

By providing a bird’s eye view of the organisation’s printing infrastructure, managers can spot potentially troublesome devices before they spill ink all over Jeff’s new shirt.

Equally, if the system offers ‘FollowMe’ printing, users will no longer have to wait in-line, as their jobs will instead be available on any compatible device within the building - at any time.

Further to this, managed print services can help to determine if you've got enough printers for your workforce and volume and the right type of printers, helping to reduce queues and expenses. 

Imagine never hearing another printer-related complaint ever again!