Twelve Page Pet Peeve

I vented about this topic two years ago, but I would like to revisit it because it’s aggravated me again recently.  It’s almost Festivus and that means it’s time for the Airing of Grievances.  I got a lot of problems with you GSUSA people!  And now you’re gonna hear about it!

Some of our Cadettes will be working with our Brownies next month for their LiA award, so I downloaded the Brownie Quest LiA letter that each Cadette will need to fill out.  It’s three pages long and there’s three of them doing it, so I’ll have to print out 9 pages.  I want a copy as well to put in my Cadette Leader notebook, so that brings the total to 12 pages.

I opened up the PDF file.  Here’s what it looks like overall:

Pretty, right?  Not if you have to print it out.  That’s a lot of color even for just three pages, but make it twelve and that starts to eat into my ink cartridges. 

Here’s what the newest Cadette Primitive Camper badge looks like:

It’s beautiful too, and something like what you’d see in a magazine.  But this is not a magazine.  It’s badge requirements.  And my printer cries uncle just seeing this come its way.   So here are the options:

• Print it at home.  If someone forced me to, I’d only print the pages with the requirements themselves and skip the 4 color full page photographs which are very nice if you’re trying to impress someone.  But it does not impress any volunteer that I know of who is just trying to see what the dang requirements are and get them printed out to stick in their Girls Guide notebook (or in my case, the 3″ binder I had to purchase because the Girls Guide is not large enough at this point).  This would eat up much of the ink in my cartridge whether it was printed in just B&W or in color.
• Copy and paste the text out of the PDF file, attempt to format it in a Word doc, and then print that in B&W.
• Send the PDF file to Office Depot/Max (using their GS discount program which they no longer seem to offer but you can use the card anyway).  At 21 cents a color copy, you’d pay a little over $2.50.  Or, you could have it printed in B&W which would cost you 26 cents.   This is assuming you live near an Office Depot.  If not, then using Staples as a base, you’d pay $5.04 for the whole booklet in color or $1.02 for B&W.  But you also have to take into consideration getting the PDF file to them via email or a USB stick plus gas to drive there and back and the time to get this $^&@* errand done.
• Buy it for $2.50 at your council store.
• Buy it for $2.50 via the GSUSA online store plus pay shipping costs if you don’t live near a local council store.

I just want to hit somebody (where’s Ouiser when you need her?) when I have to print something off directly from GSUSA.  I know I’m not the only one, because you can look at the Files section of the Facebook group Girl Scout Gab and see how many times the wheel has been reinvented just to make things easier.  We volunteers can be some creative people, but this is a complete waste of time and energy on our part to have to do this.  I’ve heard of some troop leaders buying ink cartridges out of troop funds just to cover their expenses, but this shouldn’t be necessary either.

I have three printers (don’t ask), and here’s how much ink cartridges cost for each of them.  My very old but trusty Lexmark printer’s remanufactured black ink cartridge (where I get the most bang for my buck) costs $16.99.  The HP’s color and black cartridges that don’t last very long cost $30 for a two-pack.  The Epson printer has six color and black cartridges which can cost between $15 and $20 each.  So obviously this can add up quickly if you’re printing out files like the ones I’ve featured.  And I’m not even including the cost of paper.

But even the text-only new Journeys are insanely ink and paper intensive.  If you printed off all six parts of the Brownie Think Like an Engineer Journey, you’d end up with 122 pages.  ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO PAGES.

I’ve heard it said that we’re now in the online world, and we are, but there are those of us who still like old-fashioned paper because it’s more versatile like jotting notes down on it or handing it off to a fellow leader.  You can’t do that with a tablet or phone.  And this is coming from an IT person, so it’s not like I’m anti-computer or electronics by any means.  I do a LOT on my phone, but I don’t run meetings on it unless I have to look up something that I left at home.

Just like I said in my VTK summary, this boils down to a lack of awareness of how things run on the volunteer level and what our actual needs are versus what some department up in NYC thinks.  Or what looks sleek without taking into consideration what’s really practical in the real world.

Addendum 12/26/17:  I wrote a follow-up.