Printers should all DIAF

I'm not alone in my disdain for printers. It’s almost a running joke in the sysadmin and IT world that printers are one of the most frustrating aspects of our jobs. The collective hatred for printers comes from a combination of technical, historical, and psychological factors.

Here are some of the key reasons why sysadmins and net admins loathe working with printers:

1. Printers Are Unreliable (and Always/Especially at the Worst Times)

Murphy's Law in Action: Printers will break down only during critical moments, like right before an important meeting or a deadline.

Constant Paper Jams & Mechanical Issues: Moving parts break, paper jams, rollers wear down, and sensors fail — all mechanical issues that are tedious and time-consuming to resolve.

Random Errors: Cryptic error codes like "PC LOAD LETTER" or vague "Out of Paper" messages when there is paper make troubleshooting frustrating. (My personal fav is "Finishing tray is jammed")

2. Printers Have Bad (or Inconsistent) Drivers

Driver Hell: Printer drivers aren't standardized. Windows updates or macOS changes often break compatibility. Dealing with drivers on legacy systems or hybrid environments (like macOS + Windows) adds to the complexity.

Universal Print Drivers (UPDs): UPDs don't always work. Although UPDs are supposed to "just work," they rarely do so in practice. Each model has quirks that require device-specific drivers.

Permissions and Print Queues: Windows Print Spooler is notorious for freezing up or getting stuck on a "processing" job, often requiring manual queue clearing.

3. They’re the “Noisy” Child in the Tech Environment

High Visibility = High Support Volume: Printers are used by everyone, from teachers to admin staff to principals. If they go down, you will get flooded with tickets. (obviously, this is in a school campus setting, as that is where I work.)

"My Stuff Is The Most Important" Mentality: People think their print job is more important than everyone else's, so they escalate tickets, call, email, and pester you until it’s fixed.

No Patience for Self-Troubleshooting: Few end-users check for basic issues like "Is it out of paper?" or "Is it out of toner." Instead, they immediately escalate it to the sysadmin and thereby eliciting the rise of the hate golem that is a riled-up sysadmin

4. Printers Exist in a Gray Area Between Hardware and Software

Not Quite Hardware, Not Quite Software: They're hardware, but they run firmware, and that firmware interacts with software (drivers, print spoolers, apps) in bizarre, often unpredictable ways.

Firmware Updates Can Brick Them: Printer manufacturers like HP sometimes release firmware updates that lock out third-party ink or even brick older printers.

5. Networking Nightmares

They’re Basically IoT Devices: Networked printers are IoT devices with all the baggage that implies — poor security, limited configurability, and annoying default settings.

"Where Is It?" Problems: Printers sometimes fall off the network or change IP addresses because someone didn’t assign them a static IP.

SMB Shares and Scan-to-Email Hell: Setting up "Scan to Email" or "Scan to SMB" requires dealing with authentication issues, email server configurations, and security protocols like TLS, which often change, forcing reconfiguration.

6. They Age Horribly (and They Never Get Replaced)

Old Models That Just Won’t Die: Schools, especially, will have printers that are older than most of the students. Those 10+-year-old workhorses from HP and Kyocera are still being used because "it still works," even if it crashes daily.

Old Tech, New Standards: Older printers don’t support modern network protocols (like SMB2/3) but are expected to work with modern security standards. This is like trying to plug a rotary phone into a smartphone charger.

Consumable Gouging: Printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids on the planet. Admins hate managing toner/ink inventories, and end users never reorder them in time.

7. User Errors Are Often the Cause of Printer Problems

Users Load Paper Wrong: People load paper upside down, backward, or at a slight angle, which causes jams.

They Don’t Know How to Cancel Jobs: If a 200-page document gets stuck in the print queue, the user will just keep clicking "Print" 50 times, leading to a 1000-page printout when the system finally unfreezes.

Unreported Issues Until Critical Moments: People won't report "strange noises" or "paper jams every now and then" until the printer is completely broken and they suddenly need to print 50 pages for a deadline.

8. They Require Too Much Customization

Custom Print Settings: Teachers and admin staff often want "special" configurations like duplex, booklet, color, and staple modes that need to be configured for each user profile.

Department-Specific Needs: Different departments demand different print workflows. For example, teachers want color and duplex, while accounting wants B&W, collated, and stapled.

Shared Printers = Shared Problems: One user's "custom settings" often mess up default configurations for everyone else, causing extra tickets.

9. They’re a Security Liability

They Store Print Jobs in Memory: Modern printers have memory that can store sensitive documents (think HR, medical, or payroll). These jobs can sometimes be recovered, making printers a security risk.

Printer Hijacking: Some printers are easily exploited by hackers due to outdated firmware, open ports, or exposed admin consoles.

People Print Personal Stuff on Work Printers: Some users print personal documents (tax returns, family photos, etc.), which might get stuck in the print queue or show up in print logs.

10. Sysadmin Trauma and Psychological Toll

Thanklessness of Printer Support: When you solve a printer problem, no one is impressed. It’s “just your job.” But if you don’t solve it, you get flamed as “incompetent” or “unhelpful.”

Constant Recurrence of the Same Issues: Unlike a server problem, which you can troubleshoot, diagnose, and resolve permanently, printer issues always return. You’ll "fix" it, and three days later, it’s broken again.

Past Trauma Lives On: If you've been in IT for a while, you probably have memories of horrible printer encounters. Every new printer issue triggers those old memories, and it feels like Groundhog Day.

Why It Matters

Printers represent the antithesis of progress in IT. As technology advances — cloud services, virtualization, mobile devices — printers remain an ancient relic of past tech. Unlike servers or network switches, which offer clear logic and problem-solving, printers seem arbitrary, finicky, and unpredictable. The contrast between modern tech (which “just works”) and printers (which seem to fight back) amplifies the frustration.

How to Cope with Printer Madness

Standardize Models: Stick to one printer model for consistency. If you’ve got 10 printer brands and 25 models, you’re in for driver hell. (AKA - Is it Friday yet?)

Static IPs for All Printers: Eliminate IP conflicts and ensure consistency in mapping printers on user devices.

Automate Driver Deployment: Use tools like Group Policy or Print Management to automatically push drivers and printers to workstations.

Educate Users: Train users on basic troubleshooting (e.g., adding paper, clearing jams, checking toner) to reduce simple tickets.

Request Replacement Cycles: Advocate for replacement plans. Get admin to understand that using decade-old printers is costing the school more in support hours than a new machine would cost.

Why I Hate Printers

For me, being a one-man sysadmin and net admin means printers are a distraction from real IT work. Printers make you feel like a "handyman" rather than an IT pro. It means I'm battling the physical, analog world when I’d rather be solving network issues, scripting deployments, or managing AD permissions. It's frustrating to be pulled away from higher-order tasks (network optimization, server config) to wiggle a paper tray or update a driver for a 10-year-old printer. It's not just annoying — it’s degrading, and that feeling builds resentment.

TLDR

Sysadmins hate printers because they’re unreliable, user-dependent, require constant maintenance, have poor driver support, and consume time for low-impact results. It’s hard to feel good about fixing something that will break again tomorrow. Printers aren’t "real tech" problems; they’re distractions — time-wasting busywork that feels beneath you as a sysadmin. And every sysadmin, deep down, knows it. I mean, there is a Network+ certification, not a Printers+ cert, for a damn reason!

Also, please don't let anyone get cute and create a Printers+ cert. We will all collectively hate you, and our dying words will be your name, followed by DIAF.