Saving money on basic office equipment and services is a big challenge for most firms, and it seems that some ideas are simpler than others. I used to work beside a lady who would switch off the lights every time she left a room. She left me sitting working in the dark at least once although I am pretty sure that the electricity saving was pretty minimal.
I also once had a boss who took control of the photocopier as though it were his own private gold mine. Muck up a copy and try to take it over again was akin to wasting huge sums of the firm’s money in his book. I always thought that he was greatly exaggerating the situation but when I got the job of ordering the office stationery supplies I realised why he had been so keen to keep us all on a short leash with the copier.
I Became the Guardian
It turns out that getting new tones cartridges was a bigger expense than I had ever imagined. To make matters worse the rest of the staff would form queues beside the machine from the moment we opened until closing time. I even found myself turning into a photocopier guardian at one point and doing the same sort of ridiculous things which used to annoy me when my boss did them.
Of course, this was back in the old days when we used giant photocopiers which got really hot and only had one function; to copy. As well as this, new CP2025 toner cartridges could only be bought from the official catalogue which we had, and as far as I am aware the option of getting remanufactured ones simply didn’t exist back then.
How things have changed for the better these days. For a start, I don’t have any annoying bosses switching off the lights on me or controlling the time I spend taking copies. Now I can work in a more relaxed way but I can also save money through some clever modern methods.
First of all, we use movement activated lights and timers to ensure that no money is wasted on lighting up darkened offices. The only problem I have had with these is that one day we divided the office into two and it turned out that the sensor was on the other side of the division, so I had to nip round the divider and move about a bit in order to switch the lights back on when they went off.
However, even easier than this is the idea of getting remanufactured toner cartridges for the printer. By going down this route the quality of your photocopies remains exactly the same but the cost of getting them done is a whole lot less.