October 17, 2007
Being too lazy to read an email on screen last week, Guru printed it out and discovered it was a report about unnecessary printing of emails.
It seems somebody at Fujitsu Siemens Computers had nothing better to do – probably because they were banned from printing documents – so they phoned 2,011 adults and asked them about their printing habits.
It turns out that the average British office worker prints off 22 pages every working day. This, apparently, amounts to 120 billion pieces of paper every year, the equivalent of a paper mountain more than 8,000 miles high.
Shockingly (if you are of an extremely nervous disposition, bored and obsessed by office printing statistics) more than one in two workers admit to having printed the same document several times by mistake.
Two in five people have picked up someone else’s print-out by mistake, while a massive 8% admit to printing emails before they’ve read them.
According to Fujitsu Siemens Computers, these findings “paint a concerning picture of carefree printing habits in British offices”.
But it didn’t stop there. The most boring report ever written went on to reveal that 41% of office workers print documents to share them with others for review; while one in five just want to keep hard copies for their own files.
Elsewhere, 62% of workers have changed a printer toner, and 36% have asked a colleague to help un-jam or change a toner cartridge.
Guru couldn’t believe his eyes – so he printed the report out again to be sure.
