Paper Nazi
I am a CS student at RIT, but commonly use the IT labs because they have nicer keyboards (yep, it matters). The main lab constantly staffs multiple student lab managers to watch over it - you know, to keep other students from eating, talking on their cell phones, and printing multiple copies of a document.
Alright, let’s focus on that last one. I’ve been employed as a systems administrator before, so I understand the need to keep the labs clean and quiet. The multiple copy restriction baffles me, however. The lab’s policy clearly states that multiple copies may not be printed in the lab, presumably as a courtesy to other students when many people try to print at once, and possibly to preserve lab printer supplies. But when someone does print multiple copies, there are no actions that the labbie can take against a student other than to withhold all but one copy of the document, verbally chastising the student in the process. The extra documents are then put into a recycle bin. Preserve lab resources my ass.
There are a couple ways to beat the system, which I have never used but see being used routinely. Here are my favorites:
- “It’s one document. The page numbers matter.”
- “Are these multiple copies of the same document?” “No, they are individual copies of *different* documents.”
- “Yes, they are multiple copies, but there was another document in there. Can I just pull it out real quick?” *Grab papers, walk away as lab manager stands helpless*
- Enter with a group of friends and one thumb drive, everyone prints the document.
- Two documents to print multiple copies of: print one copy of the first, one copy of the second, wait five minutes. Repeat.
I don’t even understand why after the documents have been printed, they throw them out instead of giving them to the user. There is no penalty for the now disgruntled student to use one of the above methods to print the number of documents they wanted to initially, but now at the cost of (2*copies)-1 resources utilized for 1*copies received.
Silly.
