The Phantom Printer

One of the neat things about most large office buildings is the concept of network printing. By simply jumping on the network you can print from a variety of machines within your vicinity. Simple, effective, cost efficient. Here at Deloitte we pride ourselves on a very sophisticated printer network that has it's own domain space on the intranet. The main feature is a virtual "floor map" for every office that identifies where printers are located and allows you to simply click the icon, automatically download the drivers, and print away.

The system is so state-of-the-art that when on the Deloitte backbone network you can print to any printer in any office anywhere in the US (and India for outsourcing). The only drawback to this that once you download a driver it sets that printer as your default printer until you manually change it or download the drivers for a different printer. So needless to say, from time to time this creates what I like to call a "print job wormhole." Unsuspecting documents "disappear" -accidentally directed by their unknowing authors to remote print locations across the country. This is especially prevalent for groups like audit or CTS that travel from office to office around the nation.

So sitting in the office from time to time the printer near me will fire up, and no one will ever come to claim those poor documents. They will sit on the printer indefinitely, or at least until the night janitor makes his rounds with the wastebasket. Just another day in the office... the Phantom Printer has struck again.