Printing is still needed for some workers to do their jobs

But that’s not what happened. Because the clinic’s image records aren’t entirely digital, it was able to rely on printed files and diagnose seven women with cancer. One of those women had multiple cancers, she said.

“For us to turn her away because we were relying on software, it could’ve been the point of no return for that woman,” she said. “I know it’s only paper, but that’s the real-life impact on a family.”

For workers such as Okoli, having access to printouts serves a vital purpose. While that’s not necessarily the case for most workers in America, printers are still core to how they do their jobs. Printed materials help some emphasize certain communications. They help others focus and make note-taking easier. They provide a simple way for people to distribute information. Even with all the pain points such as printer errors, mechanical issues and paper jams, some workers say they’ll continue printing.

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This year, the U.S. home and office market for printers is expected to reach $10.47 billion with more than 16.9 million laser and inkjet devices sold, according to data from market researcher International Data Corp. That would represent a 15 percent decline in sales and an 11 percent drop in market value in the past five years. Yet printers are still expected to be sold by the millions through at least the next four years, if not beyond, IDC suggests.

Some industries still rely heavily on printers for paper records. For example, health care providers often use paper for collecting information from patients and to update patient files. And the legal system relies on printers for evidence collection, presenting documents to the court, the exchange of information between involved parties and, in some cases, commercial contracts.

“As much as the market likes to talk about going paperless, printing is still something we need and require for [some] work,” said Keith Kmetz, vice president of imaging, printing and document solutions research at IDC. “It’s not disappearing.”

Brad Shannon, an IT specialist in Simpsonville, S.C., characterizes his relationship with printers as love and hate. On the best days, he’s grateful for it. On the worst, he wishes he could wield a baseball bat and smash it into a thousand pieces — like the famous scene from the movie “Office Space.”

Shannon, who works for a small government contractor and has his own consulting business, has dealt with everything from printers that had to be unplugged for 20 minutes to wake up from their sleep mode to connection issues and paper jams. The process of getting them running can be so convoluted that he tries to avoid the “hassle” of printing at all costs. But he needs a printer for work documents that have to be notarized and mailed.

“I feel like an idiot,” he said, laughing about printer problems. “I’ve been in IT over two decades … and it’s like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

For Evan Naar, a New York-based assistant general counsel at a licensing agency, the Beanstalk Group, printers are sometimes needed for commercial agreements, especially when he has to write in changes and share with both parties. He’s also had to send some documents via certified mail. And when he previously assisted a family law firm, he said he heavily used printers for documents that attorneys took to court and shared with clients.

While he understands the need for printers in his field, Naar says, they still sometimes irritate him.

“I’m an impatient person, so the timing is what frustrates me the most,” he said, referring to large print jobs. “Also, the tech can be very fickle, so sometimes you’re not getting the connection from printer to the computer.”

Printers also serve a critical purpose for people whose businesses almost entirely depend on a printed product.

That’s the case for Jon Shelness, the founder of My Property ID Registry, a company that provides people with tags for their belongings. Each tag has a number that ties it to a digital database, which stores information such as the item’s serial number. The purpose is to help people provide law enforcement with specific details about their property if it’s stolen. Of course, much of the business is dependent on physical stickers. Beyond that, Shelness said he prints brochures and marketing materials, along with individual letters to prospective clients and law enforcement agencies.

Shelness sometimes prints up to 40 to 50 pages in one day. He had to toss several inkjet printers before turning to a laser printer to do the job.

“In a way, my security product is old-fashioned, too,” he said. “I think there’s still room in this world for physical things.”

Working with physical things is the preference for some workers who say paper makes the job easier for them or their clients.

As a sales recruiter, Chris Stinson said he likes to print candidate’s résumés so he can highlight or make notes in the margins before interviews. The Alpharetta, Ga., resident said he saves so much information on his computer that sometimes finding the right file can feel overwhelming. He also says that he retains information better when he writes.

But he’s had his fair share of printer headaches. Once his printer remained idle despite the fact that he had pressed print. It was 10 minutes before an interview with a job candidate, whose résumé he was planning to print. He solved the problem just in time but joined the interview flustered, he said.

“At the end of the day, you say print and hope it does,” he said. “It aggravates me, but I don’t know if I could do without it.”

Adam Preset, vice president and analyst for the digital workplace at research and advisory firm Gartner, says ditching printers might make his work more difficult. Preset regularly gives presentations in front of large audiences, and he always carries printouts of his slides in case anything on his laptop fails — and it has.

“I could know my content so well that I don’t need notes or visuals of any kind, but I sometimes talk about concepts that are very complex,” he said. “The paper copy is insurance.”

Some workers just prefer the feel and focus paper provides. Emmett Hynous, a director of sales for enterprise-information-management software company OpenText, said sometimes he prints out long email chains and reads and writes notes on them before replying digitally. He likes to review contracts that way, too. Paper gives him a break from staring at the screen all day. His biggest qualm: the cost of ink. He spends about $60 on each replacement. He once opted for cheaper ink, but his printer wouldn’t accept the budget brand.

“It’s a necessary evil,” he said about his printer. “It’s the one thing you just won’t throw out or get rid of because you think you’ll need it the minute you do.”

Shannon Epps has had the urge to throw out her printer more than once. She said sometimes she has to step away from its confusing errors before returning to solve them. But as a remote administrative specialist, she is required to print because some of her clients prefer physical documents, invoices and snail mail.

Epps said if she could magically make the perfect printer, she would ask that it only does one thing: work.

“I won’t talk bad about it around it,” she laughed, turning her head to glance at her printer. “Once you talk bad about it, it stops working.”

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