It might be reasonable to ask employees not to use the printers at work for printing tasks that aren’t work related.

But if that’s the rule, everyone should have to follow it.

In today’s story, one employee finds out that her manager is printing a lot of personal things at work, and she decides to make her pay.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

I have to pay to print personal stuff at work? so do you, boss

Many years ago I worked for an organization providing front-line customer service.

It was a decent place to work but our manager had lots of rules.

One of the rules was that we could not do any personal printing with the printers at work.

If we did, we were expected to pay $0.50 per page for black and white printing and $1.00 per page for color.

I’m not sure who made this rule but the manager was constantly reminding us.

The manager asked her to print out a resume.

Our desks were not assigned.

Meaning, any day you could be sitting at any desk, depending on your assigned tasks for the day.

One day, I was interviewing for another job within the organization (but at another location) .

Prior to the interview, the manager of the other location asked me if I’d mind printing a copy of my resume and bringing it with me as their printers were down for the day.

I said no problem and figured I’d print it at work since it was work related.

She printed the resume.

I was sitting at a desk that did not have a printer at it.

The closest printer was located between my managers desk and an employee desk.

So I printed it and stood up to go get it.

Before I go to the printer, my manager got there first.

My print job went ahead of hers.

When she saw what I had printed she said, “OP, this looks like a personal print job.”

She tried to explain that the print job was work related.

I explained it wasn’t but she disagreed and said since it had nothing to do with our day-to-day work, I had to pay. $2.00 for four black and white pages.

I begrudgingly paid up.

I asked her what happened to the money and she said she always put it in the Christmas party fund. Alright.

She noticed another print job.

A few weeks later, I was sitting at the desk with the printer at it.

It was lunchtime and everyone except my manager agreed to go to a nearby restaurant for lunch.

I had walked out our building and realized I forgot my wallet. So I quickly ran back in to get it.

When I got to my desk, I could hear the printer going. I was curious what was being printed as it was spitting out page after page.

The manager was using the printer for personal reasons.

I quickly glanced at the pile and saw at least 100 pages printed in color, announcing a sweet 16 for Trista, our manager’s daughter.

It very obviously belonged to my manager.

My manager came out of the bathroom a moment later and seemed shocked to see me standing there.

I picked up the pile and passed it to her and told her our Christmas party fund was going to be getting a big boost.

She said nothing but looked really uncomfortable.

She decided to get revenge on the manager.

A few weeks later, our district manager made his quarterly visit.

He talked about the upcoming Christmas party and how excited he was for it.

I decided it was time for some petty revenge.

I raised my hand and said, “just wondering how much we’ve accumulated this year for the Christmas party from print jobs?”

The manger said the printer rule was a mistake.

He looked so confused and asked me to explain what I meant.

So I told him our manager’s rule.

He got really quiet and said he’d have to review this.

The next day my manager sent an email saying the printing rule was something she was misinformed on and would be abolished immediately.

Me, being the little sh** disturber I am, hit reply all and asked what would happen to the already accumulated funds?

The manager ended up buying everyone pizza.

Someone else said we should have a nice healthy fund for a pizza lunch and everyone agreed.

The next day I hear my manager ordering 10 pizzas for lunch. Also used her own personal credit card to pay for it all.

Do I think she was pocketing the printing money all along?

Absolutely.

But it was fun making her sweat and then having to spend nearly $300 the next day to make up for it!

It was smart to call out the manager when the district manager was in town, and I like how it was done in a seemingly innocent way.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader points out that the manager committed a crime.

Another reader thinks the district manager needs to see if the manager was stealing anywhere else.

This person loved everything about the story.

Another person asks lots of questions before agreeing to pay.

The manager should’ve lost her job.

Honestly, I’m not a bit surprised.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.