Why Is the Printer Always the Most Useless Piece of Technology?

There are few universal truths in life, but one of them is this: printers are the absolute worst. In a world where we have smartphones with AI assistants, self-driving cars, and fridges that can order milk, we still cannot invent a printer that just works when you need it to.

This isn’t a new problem. Printers have been the bane of human existence since their invention, and despite decades of technological advancement, they remain as temperamental as ever—finicky, prone to failure, and deeply, deeply personal in their hatred for you.

Why? Why is this the one piece of technology that refuses to evolve? Let’s break down exactly why printers are the worst invention of all time.

Step One: The Printer Refuses to Connect

The first hurdle is actually getting the printer to acknowledge your existence.

You have your document ready. You click print. The printer does… nothing. The little icon on your screen flashes mockingly, informing you that the printer is “offline.”

You check the printer. It is very much online. You restart it. Nothing. You restart your computer. Still nothing. You disconnect and reconnect the Wi-Fi, as if somehow the entire internet is to blame.

At this point, two things may happen:

1. It will start working for no apparent reason.
2. It will refuse out of pure spite.

There is no in-between.

Step Two: The Great Paper Jam That Shouldn’t Exist

Congratulations, you’ve convinced the printer to do its job. But just as it begins to whir into action, it immediately stops.

A message flashes up: “Paper Jam.”

You open the tray. There is no jammed paper.

You open every compartment like a bomb disposal expert, certain that there’s nothing obstructing the mechanism. But the printer is unmoved. The error persists.

After five minutes of increasingly frustrated panel-checking, you close everything up without actually doing anything differently, press print again—and suddenly it works.

Why? We will never know.

Step Three: The Ink Cartridge Scam

Everything seems fine. The printer is connected, there is no paper jam, and your document is about to print. But wait—a new pop-up appears.

“Ink Low.”

Now, here’s where the printer really shows its true evil. The ink is not actually low. There is clearly ink left. If you remove the cartridge, shake it, and put it back in, it will print just fine.

But no. The printer wants more ink.

At this point, you have two choices:

1. Ignore the warning and hope it keeps working.
2. Buy a replacement ink cartridge, which, for some reason, costs more than the printer itself.

You pick option two, because the printer will not let you win. You insert the brand-new, printer-approved ink cartridge, and suddenly another error appears.

“Cartridge Not Recognized.”

You scream into the void.

Step Four: The Printer Prints Everything Except What You Need

Let’s assume you have somehow bypassed all the previous obstacles. The printer finally accepts its duty, hums to life, and begins its work.

Only to print your document in a strange, faded shade of grey, despite the fact that you never selected greyscale.

Or, for no discernible reason, it spits out a completely blank page.

Or, in a new and exciting twist, it prints one line of text, pauses for 30 seconds, prints another line, and repeats this process until you’ve aged significantly.

The document you urgently needed is now a useless pile of smudged, half-printed nonsense.

Step Five: The Printer Decides It’s Out of Paper When It’s Not

The printer is full of paper. It is literally overflowing with paper. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t think it has any paper.

At this point, you briefly consider throwing it out of the nearest window.

Instead, you remove the paper—which was absolutely fine—and put it back in. Miraculously, the printer now acknowledges the paper’s existence, as if nothing happened.

It prints.

You stare at it.

The war is over… for now.

The Final Betrayal: When You No Longer Need the Printer, It Works Perfectly

Hours later, when you no longer need anything printed, you test the printer again just out of curiosity.

It prints flawlessly.

Not a single issue.

No connectivity problems, no paper jams, no ink warnings. It prints as if it was never broken.

This is when you realise the painful truth: The printer was never malfunctioning. It was testing you.

Printers don’t break. They choose violence.

Why Are Printers Still This Bad?

Technology has advanced beyond all recognition in the last two decades. We have smartphones with AI assistants, self-driving cars, and fridges that order milk when you run low.

And yet, printers remain stuck in the early 2000s, refusing to evolve.

Why? Because printer manufacturers don’t want them to improve. They make far too much money selling ink cartridges, meaning they have no financial incentive to fix the nightmare that is modern printing.

Instead, they let us suffer.

Final Thoughts: Printers Are the Worst, and We Are Trapped

No one truly owns a printer. We are simply temporary caretakers of a malfunctioning, rage-inducing relic of the past.

The printer is not our friend. It is a necessary evil, a device that only works when it senses we don’t need it to.

And yet, we continue to buy them, fight them, and let them win.

Because no matter how much we hate them, the day will come when we desperately need to print one single document.

And thus, the cycle continues.