Ask them who makes copies of the form and see if you can get them stuck in a logic loop.
Love the Brazil reference; haven’t seen that in ages.
When I worked in an office it wasn’t difficult to get a copy made, but it was extremely annoying, because a guy who had his desk next to the copier used to constantly comment in a silly voice that I was making copies, while coming up with a bunch of dumb nicknames for me.
That reminds of the conversation that happened in our department many years ago. The financial manager was bothered by all of printing (she was bothered by computers in general), and wanted a way to track everyone who was printing so the appropriate group could be made to pay.
Inquiring about what sort of costs were involved we determined that our monthly printing expenses were usually in the double digits, sometimes even low triple. Before spending anytime getting quotes for printer accounting systems I brought up with our director if this was the best use of my time. It definitely would have been very expensive to setup a system that would ultimately just be passing money from one internal account to another. Fortunately it was decided that printing would just be a “common good.”
The stack of unclaimed print jobs was aggravating, but a few hundred pages of wasted paper every month is not worth the expense involved in preventing it.
It’s taken about eight years, but I think we’ve finally replaced all our Huawei equipment. You’ve no idea how glad I am that I was not on that project.
The last real office I was in was a sales office. Making copies was a matter of simply walking across the hall. The printer/copier was one of those nice ones that could print 11" x 16" pages. You would be surprised how many D&D maps were business related.
Let’s see…to make a copy at my school I have to stand up, walk to the other side of my desk, place the item to be copied in the feed chute and hit “Copy” on the screen. Laser printers in every classroom, baby!
This reminds of what happened to my uncle. He was working at Walter Reed, so research in biochemistry (and getting a PhD in that subject at GWU). For some experiment he wanted to do he needed a special oven. It wasn’t expensive, like $500 and even in 1960 that should not have been a problem. But it was over the limit of what could be ordered without bidding. So he wrote detailed specs geared precisely to the oven he needed, figuring no one else would bid. Sure enough, some company underbid and got the contract. The oven they shipped didn’t come even close to meeting the specs. The procurement officer told him that the expense of fighting the company to return it exceeded the cost of the oven. So my uncle threw it unused in a corner of his lab and abandoned that experiment.
Getting back to the OP: even as emeritus, I can go to any photocopier in the university, scan my ID and photocopy anything I want. I don’t know who pays for it and I suppose I could get billed if I did some massive copying.
I’ve worked at about ten different facilities over the years. The only place with any sort of rule about making your own photocopies was a very large corporate R&D center that had an excellent library with bound copies of pretty much any journal you would need. If we copied an article from one of the journals, they asked us to make an extra copy of the first page and drop it into a box next to the copier. I believe this was to make sure that they paid any copyright fees that were applicable.
Some of these places also had copy centers where you could drop off large copy jobs, but their use was at our discretion.
At my workplace there were so many different forms that I proposed we needed a form to collect information about how any desired new form should be designed. I wanted to call it the “Request for Form Form”.
I think I’m funny, but I’m not. Turned out there was already such a form.
As long as I never get tired of being called “The Elmerator” or “The Fuddster” I’m good.
When I worked for DHL I needed to send some stuff internationally to some other offices. I was advised not to use DHL as the approval and review process would take a minimum of 7-10 days, but usually much longer. The quick and easy way was to use a competitor company and pay out of my own pocket. The expenses claim would then only need to be approved by my manager.
People will always find a way to beat the system!
At least you didn’t need to fill out a Request for Form Form Form in order for a clerk to give you a copy of a blank Request for Form Form that you could fill out to request the design of a new form.
That would be bad.
I haven’t copied anything in years. I work from home now, but I remember last time I tried using the office copier, I had to use my ID to access it, and I didn’t have the proper level of clearance. I just went back and located the original doc on the intranet and sent it to the printer on my floor.
Nowadays all my work is converted to PDF and sent to Adobe Work Force for review. When that’s all done, the client gets it printed. I threw away my home printer years ago. It was constantly running out of toner when I didn’t have to reboot it 15 times to connect with my computer. If I need anything scanned or printed, I go to Fed Ex/Kinko.
Normally I’d say your employer was an extraordinary cheapskate, but your first sentence suggests that they’re not. So I’d attribute it to administrative incompetence. To any little boys and girls reading this, let me add that when you grow up and go into the business or academic world, “administrative incompetence” is a concept that you will need to get used to.
But to answer the question, every place where I’ve worked has had high-end Xerox copiers with (usually) unrestricted access. To make copies, you walk into the copier room and operate the copier.
A few places, though, had machines that were shared among different departments (different “cost centers”, in biz-speak) and those places required an electronic key to activate the copier, so costs could be properly apportioned, a process that I’m pretty sure cost much more than any money it ever saved the overall organization. The key was usually kept by a stern female of formidable stature who was typically also the Keeper of Office Supplies.
I have, however, outwitted this ogre on several occasions, and to this day my potato chips and soda crackers are secured with alligator clips that are technically the property of a former employer.
Private school teacher, here. To print something, I click Print on my computer, then walk down the hall to the library, tap my card on the machine to log in, and print (I could also go to a few other locations in the building, but the library is the most convenient for me). I’m not sure if I’ve had occasion to make any hardcopy-to-hardcopy copies since they installed the new machines, but I’m pretty sure that the process for that is to walk up to the machine, tap my ID, put my originals on the tray, and hit the Copy button.
Given that we have to log in, I suppose it’s possible for the administration to track who’s making how many copies, and to do something about excessive use, but I’ve never heard of it being an issue.
In our office (a bank), we have to log in to the photocopier before using it. They added that requirement a few years ago; before that it was just walk up and use.
I’ve never needed to actual photocopy (as in start with a dead-tree version, end with two dead-tree versions) a document. On the fairly rare occasion that I’ve needed to print something it’s just been:
- Send doc to the print queue
- Wander over to whatever printer is nearest
- Scan my badge on the printer.
- Printed document comes out.
Yes, I think this is just one of those workplace culture relics that unfortunately endure out of inertia. I always find it sad and frustrating when changes or intelligent exceptions can’t be made. Reminds me something I just read too.
Remember Skylab? I read a history of the program recently and one of the astronauts told a story about a piece of equipment he used. This was Owen Garriott, who flew on the second Skylab mission. He had a NASA issued scientific calculator in his office and realized it would be useful during the rendezvous with the space station. He wrote a program on the little magnetic strip it had and took it with him on the mission. This was before laser range finders, and he used it to help compute the closure rate as they approached.
So years later after he also flew a shuttle mission, Garriott was leaving NASA and still had the calculator on his desk. He wanted to keep it and put in a formal request, including offering to pay for it. But he said of course, this was “too much” for the bureaucracy to manage and he was forced to turn it in with his other equipment. Unfortunately, this interesting space artifact probably ended up in a landfill instead of a museum.
I work in county government and can make as many copies as I want on multiple printers. No ID or sign in needed.
Also county gov. When I was in the office I think each department had a 3 digit id. To ‘keep track’ I work in IS. As far as I know, nobody looked at those numbers. Nobody cared, we have more important things to do.
It’s basically bureaucratic BS. Somebody said, “Yeah, let’s turn that function on” thinking they where doing their job of making ‘decisions’
Some years ago my location installed badge readers on all of the printers. Unclaimed print jobs was part of the reason. The other problem? Confidentiality. People would print out confidential, or even secret, information, and leave it lying in the printer. If you want your printout, you have to go to the printer and scan your badge.
For whatever reason, our printer didn’t get the badge reader, so I didn’t have to bother with it.
For large printing jobs, there’s a department that can do just about anything. They have a process, and it’s fairly straightforward to use. They just want to know the cost center.
Since Covid, I really wonder why we still have so many printers. I think they could halve the number in our building and there would barely be a peep of complaint.
It used to be a bigger problem to get something shredded. Now there’s a monster shredder in the basement, so I don’t have to take it to the big shredder in the other building.