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I used my office printer to print 4 colored pictures for my sister's school project. The office printer is of much higher quality so I thought why not. At first, I didn't think much of it, but I'm wondering if this is a no-no in the workplace?
Thank you.
Of course. From time to time. I don't think it's frowned upon as long as you get your work done.
If people were printing that much while at work, I would think that paper waste would be a minor problem compared to all the lost effort that went into that printing. People must have been running print shops on the side during business hours.
It was pretty bad, but the decision to do it this way has straightened out a lot of it. Even though it's on 7 cents a page, people just don't want to pay it. They were glad to take advantage of it when it was free, but not so much as long as there is ANY charge whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't like the idea when it was first brought up to us. Mainly I was worried that the access codes could be something that would be fairly easy to figure out and then you'd have people printing things out and having them charged to another employee. Now, that has happened when people have forgotten to log out of the printer, but for the most part, the change to this system has gone pretty smoothly. I never printed out personal things at work before we started doing it this way except for maybe an occasional boarding pass if I forgot to do it at home and I was going to be leaving shortly after work. That's about all I do now also, but other people are printing out a lot less non-work related documents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rchan
I wouldn't do it if you worked at a large corporation where they have an IT department. They have the capacity to check every single page you've ever printed - and even replicate what you've printed. I heard of a story where they publicly made fun of an employee for printing personal things, and replicated everything she did and stuck it on her desk telling her not to do it again.
Wouldn't this be considered a form of harassment and therefore, illegal? Sure, the company could punish her for printing all of that stuff, but it doesn't mean she deserves to be publicly made fun of.
If you do so without permission then, yes, it's a "no-no". If you worked as a car salesman would you think it would be OK to take a car off the lot every night to ride around in?
Not even the same thing....as the latter would have serious legal ramifications.
Something to consider, especially if you work for a very large company is that there are background print applications being used that literally track not only who prints and how many pages, but they copy your printed items off to a large storage server so that improper use can be checked for. Although the purpose is really to look for people printing confidential items that shouldn't be printed, you can be caught and fired for using company printers for personal use.
After reading a couple more pages of the responses, I thought I had better add to my own post.
This capability extends to the work from home user on the corporate VPN as well. If I print something, my print job actually goes out to corporate world somewhere, gets saved into that huge database, then sent back over the VPN connection to me, to my printer. This software doesn't even allow us to have a true "local" printer. Even a quick print screen goes off to neverland, then back to my printer, in my house. Since they provide the printer, I can't really complain.
If you do so without permission then, yes, it's a "no-no". If you worked as a car salesman would you think it would be OK to take a car off the lot every night to ride around in?
I use the office printer occasionally. my printer at home sucks and uses a lot of ink. ink cartridges aint cheap either. I don't print a lot of things so it is like a drop in the bucket for the office. they do waste a lot of paper
I do but I rarely have anything to print. One guy in my office uses the color printer for personal use like no other.. He has tones of pictures up in his cubicle that he's printed here. Only thing I have printed that was in color was my Cowboys schedule lol
If you do so without permission then, yes, it's a "no-no". If you worked as a car salesman would you think it would be OK to take a car off the lot every night to ride around in?
Seriously? That's hardly the same thing. Offices print 1000s of pages a day of useless junk. You really think that 4 pages makes a difference?
Considering the pathetic ways that companies are squeezing employees these days, I think it's perfectly fair to use office supplies for personal use as long as you're not doing so excessively.
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