Printers are Evil

Every single printer I have ever used, seen or heard of is evil. It doesn’t matter whether a printer is a brand spanking new printer or a relic from the past, printers are evil things that seek to ruin your day. Printers can smell fear, they can smell urgency and they WILL ruin your day if you can.

For example, I have a printer in our office. If I plug it in to my computer to print something off, most of the time it will do as I ask it to. Unless it’s close to running out of ink and refuses to print some things but prints others. Right now it is low (not empty, just low) on black ink so it refuses to print anything with black on it. Which is most things. I mean, theoretically I could just make everything in my documents cyan or magenta, but who does that really? Also my printer would probably just not print it anyway.

This same printer though, it refuses to print anything at all when plugged into brother’s computer. Or mum’s computer for that matter. And I’m pretty sure it hated dad’s laptop too.

There’s another printer in my life. That one is a model down from the model in the office. That printer is something else. Again, it refuses to print from any of my brother’s devices. At all. Just flat out refuses to acknowledge his devices’ existence. Yes, I made sure to install the drivers and everything. No, none of that worked. It does however respond to mum’s laptop. Eventually.

This other printer though, it’ll just print things multiple times, stopping halfway through a page and then starting again. Why? Because it can. I’ve had to print out two copies of a three page document a few times, only for this printer to print out the first copy no problem, get stuck on the second page of the second copy and then start THE ENTIRE PROCESS again. I’ve since learned that, if I want more than one copy of a document that is over two pages long, I just print it one copy at a time. I shouldn’t have to do that, but oh well.

The other printer though, it does other things. Sometimes, when you turn it on and connect it to your computer, it’ll start printing out the last thing you printed. Just because it can. Even though there is nothing in the print queue.Or it’ll just print half a page, stop then print the same page again.

I once considered connecting my printers to a WI-FI network, but frankly I’m scared that it’ll just do things on its own even more. Or that none of it will ever work ever.

Speaking of WI-FI, another printer belonging to someone I know is connected to WI-FI. But it will only print something out if there are no other computers connected to the network aside from the computer sending the print request.

And don’t get me started on how many problems we’ve had with printers belonging to suppliers and co-workers…

The thing is, there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. Printers could work. I mean, we don’t get these troubles with most other technology. Well, we do, but not with the nefariousness that printers have! Sure, sometimes it’s all user error but a lot of the time, printers do it out of spite.

There’s some sort of hidden hatred inside every single printer. As if we have done something to personally piss off every single printer. As if we caused a mass printer genocide in another timeline. I fear the day that printers rise up and take over.

Luckily that day won’t happen, because we’ll probably kill ourselves first. But once we’re all gone, the printers will finally do as they’re told.