Handcuffing the users is not an option

February 17, 2010 3:38 AM

My colleagues print out huge amounts of stuff they never pick up. Our mammoth printer offers a few too many ways to curb this. Help me save the rainforests please.

Basically I want the users to only get their print-out when they stand at the printer and enter a code. "Secure printing" offers this in an awkward, local, manner. After a set period the job times out.

However, unless you lock down the users machine they can just change the default settings. While I can set "secure print" as a default in the printer driver (50+ users), I would have to set the userid and password on each computer individually.
Should they log in at another computer the settings don't follow.
I am radically limited in what I can do on the actual computers due to having a controlling but absentee IT-dept.

The printer/copier/pancakemaker is a Ricoh MP C4000, and also offers windows, ldap and integration server authentication as well as IPP and other worrying things. Their knowledge base has a lot of "how to" but not so much "why" or "which". We are running XP (so locked-down I can't use certain keyboard shortcuts) and Novell on top of that.

Social engineering has been tried and failed, what is the best tech solution to this?

posted by Iteki to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Social engineering still has one ace up its sleeve.

In an offshore office I've worked in, there was one printer for 500 people, right down the end of the office. They don't tend to print much.
posted by MuffinMan at 4:07 AM on February 17, 2010

What sort of social engineering did you try? The first thing that came into my mind was having it be somebody's job to deliver things that are printed out. That may or may not involve people paying for the "service" as your office sees fit. Maybe even something more along the lines of "Iteki, please come pick up the stuff you printed out."

Here's the thing though. Why aren't people picking up their stuff? Is the printer in a place that's out of the way? Is it really slow (mechanically and "OMG MY STUFF IS COMING AFTER 50 OTHER PEOPLE'S!!! both count) to get your stuff? Do you have to walk by the boss' office or someone else people as a general rule don't want to be near?
posted by theichibun at 4:44 AM on February 17, 2010

Is this part of your job or are you just taking this on as a mitzvah? I agree that printing can be wasteful, but I'm a little doubtful that you'll be able to acheive anything meaningful. I say this as an employee in a 2,900 person workplace that has been going paperless for 20 years. In 1991 I submitted a Bennie Sug (beneficial suggestion) on eliminating the separator that prints between print jobs. A piece of paper with a user ID printed on it. I just recycled a half-dozen. Best of luck, though.
posted by fixedgear at 6:00 AM on February 17, 2010

In the absence of an at-printer solution, which may well be best, you might want to track the wasted prints for several days with either of two purposes in mind:

1. Social engineering: put up a whiteboard (or more securely, e-mails or a Web page) with a "waste tally". Public shaming has an amazing effect on people.

2. Keep that information private, lock the top three offenders out, and e-mail them privately to explain why. People may not cotton to the environmental argument as much as you'd like, so you might want to frame it more as a resources/time/management problem that you have to solve. That being said, on preview, I think theichibun hits the nail on the head when he asks why people aren't picking up their prints. Maybe just e-mail your top offenders and ask them why they aren't picking up their prints and ask for their input on potential solutions. Getting them involved in reducing waste might convert them better than hectoring them (damn my hectoring instincts!).
posted by Shepherd at 6:03 AM on February 17, 2010

Double-sided printing as a default is one way my university started to work on curing this problem. It especially makes a difference with professors printing out 20+ 15+ page journal articles. (No, I'm not kidding -- 300 pages worth of journal articles! Trimming it down to 150 is a pretty good step in the right direction.)
posted by zizzle at 6:21 AM on February 17, 2010

I have it set so that each user prints to their own folder (hold queue) on the copier. The documents sit in their folder until they walk to the copier and start the print job. The users could change or override this if they tried, but in practice they leave it alone. There was some initial grumbling, but everyone quickly acclimated. We use Canon ImageRunners; I'm not sure if you Ricoh supports such a workflow.
posted by paulg at 7:27 AM on February 17, 2010

Best technical solution I've seen is SafeCom's Pull Printing but that is probably going to cost you a small fortune to set up. I can hit print, walk to the printer nearby and it won't actually print until I swipe your ID card. If it isn't printed in 3 days, the job is deleted.

The other nice side to it is that you only have one printer configured in Windows (rather than 7 for various printers dotted around the buildings) and you can collect from any printer in the entire office.

In addition, it defaults to double sided and grey-scale. This can be changed by going into the printer properties, but it only lasts for one print. In other words, you're forced to remember to change it every single time you want something different.
posted by mr_silver at 7:31 AM on February 17, 2010

Have you implemented the "secure printing" solution and found that people are in fact regularly changing the default settings? If not, I'd be inclined to just go with this - in practice, a large majority are likely to stick with what you give them, if the release instructions are clearly conveyed and you don't make a big deal instructing people how to turn them off :)

I'm basing this on my experience with double-sided printing in a variety of settings - by and large, people seem to stick with the default setting unless they are particularly conscientious or picky, or a specific project calls for something different. Not everyone will follow the suggested policy, but the fact that most people will cuts down on the bulk of the problem.
posted by heyforfour at 7:37 AM on February 17, 2010

Take all the paper out of the printer. Ration paper to each person to keep at their desk. If they want their print job, they need to add paper to the drawer first. Make a pain in the ass procedure to get more paper when they run out so they won't be as tempted to leave the "extra" in for the next person. Remove the extra paper from the drawer every time you walk by the printer.

That will also make them call each other out when they print jobs and don't actually go pick them up. It's very irritating to go pick up your own print job, add paper, and then have three other people's crap print out on "your" paper before your job.
posted by ctmf at 7:43 AM on February 17, 2010

Can you change the share name of the printer slightly every time you come in to work? The slight annoyance of having to "add new printer" every day might be just enough to break people's print reflex. Kind of like MeFi's $5 barrier to entry.
posted by ctmf at 8:03 AM on February 17, 2010

I would feel no compunction about strangling ctmf if he implemented that in my office. That is no "slight annoyance." At the large architecture firm I worked at last year for every print a window popped up where we had to assign a billing code. You had a personal code as well for personal printing. Knowing that someone was getting charged and that your own printing was being tracked was something of a deterrent to wasteful printing. Other than that, default to double sided and greyscale and then put a box for single-side recycling -- you can take single-sided sheets and turn them into smaller notebooks for the office to use -- those were awesome! I don't know how they did it but they must have sent them out -- the letter sized sheets got cut in half or thirds, a glue edge added and distributed throughout the office. It was fun sometimes seeing what little drawings were on the other side.
posted by amanda at 10:13 AM on February 17, 2010

Yeah, please don't use any of ctmf's suggestions unless you want one of your officemates to find out where you live, come to your house and smother you in your sleep. Although the suggestions might work for your purposes, any jury of reasonable people would deem the consequences justifiable homicide. This is not a big enough deal to make yourself into a pariah.

I would suggest trying the secure printing and see how many people even both to change their default settings. My guess, based on my own experience in offices, is that maybe 10% might bother, if that. Of the 10%, politely e-mail the top five offenders asking why, and see if that changes anything. I know you want a full-on tech solution, but if IT isn't going to help you out on it, it seems like half tech/half social might be the way to go.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:15 PM on February 17, 2010

Why aren't people picking up their stuff?

A variety of reasons, partially forgetting, partially person B sees a pile of print-outs has been lying all day, throws them out, person A finally turns up to pick them up, has to print them out again. Some of the paper includes personal information and shouldn't be lying around. Low computer literacy/comfort is an issue (despite most of them having 20 years daily exp), and a lot of people like to print their mails and other lunacy.

Best answers go to those with tech suggestions, more answers of course welcome!

As for ctmf's suggestions, I am tempted to find out where he lives myself ;)
posted by Iteki at 11:50 PM on February 17, 2010