Spent a full day on a printer that was just unplugged

I mean, a client brought in a desktop that wouldn't print, said they'd tried everything. I spent like 6 hours checking drivers, the spooler, network settings, the whole deal. Finally, I asked them to send a picture of the setup. The power cable was just hanging loose behind the desk, not even in the wall. I felt like a total idiot. Has anyone else had a simple fix waste that much of your time?

3 comments

3 Comments

harris.ray1mo ago

My uncle always said 90 percent of problems are power or connections. I spent a whole afternoon once on a TV that just needed the input changed from HDMI 2 back to HDMI 1. It's like we're trained to look for the complex answer first, so we skip right over the simple stuff. The real fix is almost always stupidly easy, but you have to exhaust all the hard options before you even see it. Makes you wonder how much time we all waste looking for hard solutions to simple problems.

grant.margaret1mo ago

My old boss had a rule, check the physical stuff first for a full five minutes. It saved us so much time. I get what @harris.ray is saying, but I don't think we're trained to skip the simple stuff, I think the client's panic just gets in our heads. You start assuming they already checked the basics, so you jump to the harder fixes.

keithreed1mo ago

My first IT job I thought checking cables was a waste of time. After my own six hour printer hunt, I finally get why you start there.