The Top Five Most Frustrating Office Accessories

Frustration with office equipment is universal among office workers. At one time or another an office worker has experienced problems with their office equipment, casing them to loose valuable time, which could have been spent on more important business work.

A big challenge of modern business is to eliminate time loss.  As part of this process businesses should look at streamlining processes and looking at areas which are using an excessive amount of time. Office equipment failures is not only time consuming but it can also be very disruptive and can cause workers to become frustrated and stressed.  Study after study has shown workers perform better when they are in a good mood. Failure of office equipment is easily able to change the mood of the most good natured employee. Here are some examples of the most frustrating office equipment.

Printers and Copiers
Any machine that feeds paper through it on a regular basis will jam. A paper will become bent; a staple will somehow work its way into the machine. These breakdowns almost always occur during high volume jobs, or when you need that vital single copy. Printing address labels are often their own hell, with the labels managing to glue themselves on the insides of the machines. Copiers require the original to be placed accurately and on the right side. Usually the person in front of you fails to return the copier settings as needed for normal copies. Offices can help with these issues by purchasing the correct paper and brand name toners and cartridges and providing training on use to their employees. Offices incur much frustration and down time while waiting for the office “expert” to be available.

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The Fax Machine
These machines seem so simple. They combine two functions people do daily: dialling the telephone and setting up papers to be passed through the machine. First, it is easy to send the fax through with the wrong side exposed so that no fax is sent. The feeding mechanisms often jam, and offices seem to replace drums longer after they have expired. Dailing can also be an experience. Sometimes the numbers don’t connect, numbers are set up in memory don’t work, and office workers using the machine often tend to reprogram the numbers to fit their area of expertise. It is easy to accidentally call of machine reports or resets; it is very hard to end them. Employees tend to turn off the machine to fix this, sudden power losses are not good for any office equipment.

The Automatic Postal Machine
Most businesses need to send out mail even in these days of email. The automatic post machine should save time by posting faster than a mere human and saving trips to the post office. In practice, this often falls short. First, the machine has to be set for a certain size of envelope. If a larger size or thicker envelope sneaks in, the machine will jam or put on the wrong postage which causes the letters to be returned. Offices often purchase machines that can’t handle their largest mailings because they don’t send these mailings all the time. Plus, the postage rates often are not updated immediately when they change. Often, for small mailings, office workers use the old manual method to post if that is an option.

The Office Computer
This is a major problem of modern offices. Think about how much time you waste waiting for this thing to come up, send your message and locate accounts and records. Keys stick, monitors start looking funny, and records don’t seem to reflect the work you actually performed. Often, the software chosen by the company is not nearly as compatible as the IT people think it will be. The problem is worse when the things break down. And, there is the manager’s challenge of employees who would rather play with a social network, then do their actual jobs. Of course, this is often a response to endless waiting for the computer to get to business.

The Office Telephones
Telephones have gone beyond the simple ring and answer of the past. The usual office phone records messages, tells who is calling, connects to other phones with a button, and has time saving automatic dialing features. Yet, most offices don’t give their employees classes on using all of the money saving features they are paying for. This results in things like having recorded messages no one remembers how to change, telephones put on hold for hours and isolation of some employees. Many workers now wear headphones to decrease the noise while talking on the phone. These headphones need to be individually sized and fit, but many offices adopt the one-size fits all approach. Ouch. Maybe simple was better.

All jobs have their frustrations, but office workers have some built-in time killers. Anyone who can solve these equipment issues will make himself very well off.

WILL writes for Principal Corp a leader in the consumer electronics, office refurbishment & managed printing solutions industries. Principal can ensure you have the right office and technology solutions for your business.