No matter how well-oiled or well-staffed your office is, there is bound to be a time when you realized you were out of toner cartridges and didn’t have any backups in sight. The low toner warning on the printer is always a reason to panic, even slightly, especially if you are working on a tight deadline. For one customer’s office, the last emergency with no toner and no replacement cartridges in sight was a big one.

The customer’s office is huge – they have a variety of printers and order a bunch of different toner supplies, including Laserjet toner cartridges, Xerox toner cartridges, dry ink for some of their printers and even Samsung toner for a few older printers still in use. The office was fairly consistent about replacing empty toner and ordering their supplies at regular intervals, being sure to keep a stock of extra cartridges on hand. There was one incident, however, when the woman in charge of ordering supplies was out for a few weeks and no one was there to pick up the slack. Business was booming, and the printers were running night and day with new contracts, work for sale and information on new leads. They picked up a lot of business and sent out proposals left and right.

The middle of the month hit, the first printer went down. The main secretary’s HP 2550 toner ran out, and she just went ahead and started using another printer. That printer ran smoothly for a few days, and then broke down. Those people started using the HR printer, which quickly ran out of its toner as well. Soon everyone was reduced to using one single printer, and no one even realized it – or paid attention.

Right before a big proposal was due, that printer heaved its last sigh. And the office went quiet. There was no way to print anything off. It was hardly a life-changing event, but it did slow everyone down and caused quite a bit of panic and stress. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem – the company could just run down to the office supplies store and buy a new cartridge or run over to the printing place and run off our copies. This is ultimately what happened, but it was a hassle and the report did end up being a few hours later than originally promised, causing a rift between company and client.

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