Because they suck:

Office Depot Inc. will close about 9 percent of its North American stores over the next three months and open fewer locations next year in an effort to cut costs, the office supply chain said Wednesday.

The plan to shutter 112 stores will reduce the chain’s base to 1,163. It plans to close 45 stores in the Central U.S., 40 in the Northeast and Canada, 19 in the West and eight in the South.
[...]

Office Depot shares, which have tumbled more than 82 percent since the beginning of the year, were unchanged in pre-market trading Wednesday at $2.43.

Amazingly, the Palm Desert store (aka the eighth circle of hell) is not on the chopping block. This is likely due to the fact that all the old people (99% of Palm Desert’s population) need their Post-it note dispensers and Frank Abagnale Jr. endorsed anti-forgery gel pens.

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I never thought I’d post another blog entry under the “Adventures in Customer Service” category, but I recently received a check from Office Depot, my employer from March to August, 2004, thanks to a $16 million settlement in the class action lawsuit Birch et al. v. Office Depot, Inc.:

On July 21, 2006, Plaintiff Eric Birch filed a complaint in San Diego County Superior Court against Office Depot on behalf of a class of current and former non-exempt employees who worked in California retail stores. Plaintiffs Fabian Alcala and Laura Muller later joined the Lawsuit as additional plaintiffs and the case was transferred to the U.S. District Court in San Diego.

Plaintiffs contend that Office Depot owes the Class Members wages and penalties under California labor law. Specifically, Plaintiffs contend that Office Depot failed to provide meal periods and rest breaks in compliance with California law, failed to pay wages for missed meal periods and rest breaks, failed to pay wages for all time worked, failed to provide itemized wage statements, failed to pay final wages within the time periods prescribed by law, failed to pay “waiting time” penalties for the late payment of final wages, and engaged in unfair business practices based on those alleged violations.

Finally, legal proof that all my bitching about Office Depot was not unwarranted. The only good thing about Office Depot was that it provided me with hilarious incidents to blog about. Looking back, I’m surprised my managers never found this blog and promptly fired me on the spot, but I don’t think they really knew how to use a computer, much less the internets.

Whatever, dude

Thank you, Eric Birch. If I ever run into you one of these days, beers are on me.

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“Guess where I went today?”

“Alcatraz!”

“No, Office Depot! HA!”

Those two words made me cringe. Office Depot. God, how I hate that place. Those of you who have been reading this blog for over a year know what I’m talking about, but those who haven’t may be wondering why the mention of “the world’s leading supplier of office products and services” would cause such a reaction.
I graduated from GW in December 2003 and spent the month of January working on General Wesley Clark’s unsuccesful presidential campaign in the freezing cold weather of New Hampshire. After returning from New Hampshire, I didn’t have anything to do, but knew that I would be leaving the desert in September to go to LSE, so I had roughly eight months to spend at home. Most of my days, then, consisted of waking up around 10am, playing video games, surfing the internet, and watching the History Channel. It was nice, but after 3.5 years of college, internships, and a month of campaign work, I felt lazy and unproductive. In addition, every day my mom would say to me “You need to get a part-time job.”

“Yeah, I’m all over it.”

“You need to find a job now or else you’ll be broke in London and won’t be able to travel!”

I spent a lot of time looking around job web sites for something I wouldn’t mind doing. Most of the openings were for nurses, which I wasn’t qualified to do due to my lack of, well, any training in nursing, and security guards, which sounded kinda fun, but I didn’t really want to work a graveyard shift. The thing about the Palm Desert/Palm Springs area is, there isn’t much to do there. There’s a ton of old people (hence why we need so many nurses) who live in gated communities (and thus the need for security guards) which are surrounded by resort hotels and big box stores. I was looking into some jobs at the Marriott, and did, in fact, apply to be a “beverage cart attendant” (aka beer cart girl) at a local Marriott golf course. The interview consisted of dancing the macarena or some other nonsense, and in the end, I didn’t get the job. I really hope future job interviews don’t require dancing, because yours truly has “two left feet.”

So, the only thing left, then, is retail. One day, my mom calls me from work and tells me that she just got back from Office Depot. Apparently, they had a “help wanted” sign in the window that said they were looking for people to work part-time in the technology department.

Hmm…Office Depot. I didn’t have any strong feelings towards the place. I probably went in there once a year to buy school supplies, and that was it. So really, an office supply store, how bad could it be?

I picked up their 80 page application, filled it out, and turned it in. A few hours later I get a call from the assistant manager:

“Can you come down for an interview?”

“Sure. When?”

“Can you come tonight?”

Hmmm…someone sounds a bit desperate for warm bodies to fill the sales floor. That should have been my first clue.

I told him I couldn’t make it that night, because I had really important stuff to do, like going to TGIFriday’s for happy hour (can’t miss the half-price Sesame Jack chicken strips).

So, I went the next morning and had my interview with the general manager and assistant managers. At the end, they say “OK, we’d like to have you but first we will send you down for a drug test and run a background check. We’ll call you when we get the results.”

Wow, a drug test AND a background check? Did I just interview to work at the CIA or an office supply store? I didn’t even have to go through that when I worked in DC. Weird.

I passed the drug test and the background check. The company they hire to do the background check even sent me a copy of the results…they actually did a search for criminal convictions/arrest records in the state of California and the District of Columbia. Hardcore.

I was now officially a part-time employee of Office Depot, Inc. Part-time, by the way, was not really “part-time”, but more like 39 hours a week. That way, the company could work me like a full-time employee (40 hours) without having to give me the benefits that full-time employees are entitled to according to state and federal laws.

Soon after I started working there, our general manager quit, thus putting even more pressure on the already overburdened staff. Although I was a “tech” they assigned me a variety of tasks, from working in the hellish copy center to stocking every single office supply product known to man. Still, I spent the majority of my time selling technology products (computers, printers, fax machines, software, telephones, etc) to customers. If you’re at all familiar with the “desert resort” I call home, you know the type of people that live there. Needless to say, you develop a lot of skill in dealing with wealthy and irate people who are in search of expensive technology products. Also, I learned a lot about how not to run a business. I couldn’t believe some of the wastefulness that was going on there. And yet, Office Depot wonders why it keeps posting loss after loss? Hmmm…

While there, I detailed the trials and tribulations of working in an office supply store on this website, in a running series called “Adventures in Customer Service”. I actually received quite a bit of e-mail and comments from fellow Office Depot employees across the United States – they had stumbled across my site while looking for someone to commiserate with, so it was interesting to hear from them and how much they, too, hated working for our oppressive master.

On the plus side, though, I did make some good friends while I was there, and still keep in touch with most of them. And, of course, Office Depot, Inc. provided me with a weekly paycheck that I stowed away in my bank account while dreaming of pints of Guinness and far-away places.

I eventually quit in August, spent a week surfing in Oceanside (my own personal “detox” treatment to wash away the Office Depotness), and then prepared to move to London.

Occasionally, throughout the past few months, I would think to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe I was working at Office Depot this time last year. That really sucked.” The obnoxious customers, incompetent management, ridiculous uniform regulations, collecting stray shopping carts in the 115 degree heat – it all seemed like some bad dream.

I haven’t been back to Office Depot since last August, and don’t intend to, but I did run into my managers the last time I was in California, in December. I was eating at Island’s with my friends when I looked over my shoulder and saw the familiar blue and white striped shirts. It was the general manager and assistant manager, taking one of their long lunches that us regular grunts weren’t entitled to. I thought I should at least say hello, so before leaving the restaurant I went over to their table.

“Hey.”

“Well look who it is! How’s London?”

“It’s great.”

(insert minute of random BS)

“Well, when you graduate, you’re welcome to have your job back.”

“Actually,” I replied “I was thinking maybe I could be your manager.”

I always was a smartass.

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WARNING: THIS IS LONG. VERY, VERY LONG!

I couldn’t bring closure to my career at Office Depot without posting this final volume of my adventures in customer service. So, yes, dear comrades, this will be the last post dedicated to customer service stories unless, by some unfortunate twist of fate, I am once again forced into the striped collared shirt and khakis. (On a side note, I gave my shirts back to the store, even though they were mine, but really, what am I going to do with five Office Depot shirts??? Eh, maybe they are fashionable in London).

I still keep in touch with some of my co-workers from Office Depot. While I admit that I hated working there, I did make some good friends, so there was one positive side to spending a few months there. From what my friends have told me, life at Office Depot has become even more hellish, with 4-5 people quitting in the past few weeks (Can you blame them? It really does suck to work there), so I’m glad I got out of there early.
There were, of course, a few employees that I did not like. In fact, it is fair to say that I despised them. These were the ones who sucked up to the management and were thus thought of as the ones who “did all the work”, although in reality that was far from the truth. They were also the ones who constantly mocked other employees for being “slow” or “stupid”, and frequently talked behind the backs of other employees. In my view, such an employee was a vrag naroda (”enemy of the people”) of our store, and was firmly tied to the managerial class (the other class being us regular employees, who labored under the managers).

Now, onto the stories:

Karma is a bitch
This lady occasionally comes into our store to make copies for her business. She always uses the self-serve machine, which used to cost 5 cents per copy, but now costs 6 cents per copy. While she was walking to the copy machine, an employee asked her if she needed any help, and she yelled “NO, I DON’T NEED ANY HELP!” Whoa, OK. So she finishes her copies and takes them up to a cashier to pay for them. The cashier gave her the total, and the lady started freaking out and saying that we were trying to overcharge her by 40 cents. The cashier explained that the price for self-serve copies was now 6 cents instead of 5 cents (OMG, a whole cent raise!). The lady proceeded to yell quite loudly that she had no idea we had raised the prices of copies and why didn’t we let the customers know this. We had, in fact, posted several signs around the self-serve copiers that notified customers of the new 6 cent price, but I’ve learned that several of our customers have serious problems when it comes to reading comprehension – like they just can’t read. It makes me wonder how these people can run their own business. Anyways, the CSM (customer service manager), who is sick of arguing with this lady over 40 cents, tells the her to just take her copies and leave. She walks out the store. We are relieved.

Two minutes later, she walks back into the store. Oh God no.

But this time, she’s smiling and nice – a complete Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde routine. As it turns out, God has seen fit to punish her by disabling her car. “My car won’t start,” she says in a sickeningly sweet voice. “Can I use your phone?” My CSM glances over at the phone and tells her to dial 9 for an outside line. So the lady calls AAA (or I assumed it was AAA) and tells them about her dilemma. She needs the store address, so she asks us what the store address is. There are four of us standing around customer service (it was around 6:30 on a Sunday evening – no customers at that time) and none of us say anything. We just stand there, pretending to be occupied with a task, while she shrilly cries “What’s the address here?!?!” Finally, one of the CSMs grabs a business card with the store address on it and throws it on the counter. The lady gives AAA the address and leaves the store to sit outside in her car. My shift was over, so I left. The next day the other employees told me that when the tow truck guy got there she started screaming at him about something. She threw her AAA card at him, and he threw it back at her and left. Just left her sitting there! When the store was finally closed down, and all the employees were leaving, the lady was still sitting in her car. Hmmm, maybe someday she’ll learn to be nicer to all those “little people.”

Why rent an office when you can just use our furniture displays?
There is this guy (let’s call him “Jim”) who would come into our store at least 3-4 times a week. He owns a business, but apparently he does not have an office, so he used our store as his own personal office (and he probably still uses it as his office, but since I no longer work there I don’t know for sure). For example, Jim would come into the store and commandeer the furniture display closest to the copy center and sit there for up to six hours working on whatever, making a few copies, sending the occasional fax, and jabbering on his cell phone with his clients (I have no idea what his actual business is). The rest of the time he wandered around the store bragging to all the employees about how much money he has (uhhh then why don’t you get an office with a copier and fax machine? We sell those machines here!) and talking everybody’s ear off about all the world traveling he has done. He bought a laptop from our store a few months ago and treats all the computer salespeople as his personal techs (having them set up his Yahoo email account, showing him how to use it, etc). Sometimes he would have meetings with HIS employees RIGHT THERE AT THE FURNITURE DISPLAY. Seriously, WTF? One time, he even told my CSM “I’m expecting a call from a client here, so could you please let me know when someone is on the line for me.” Ummm, you gave a client the number of an office supply store and told them to contact you there??? Now, maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t you be a little wary of dealing with some guy who was running his business out of a Bush furniture display at Office Depot?

(And no, I haven’t the slightest idea why the managers let him get away with this).

Middle-aged motorcycle gang visits Office Depot
One particular Sunday, I pulled into work and was surprised to see that a motorcycle gang had taken over several parking spots in front of our store – and by motorcycle gang I mean middle aged doctors and lawyers who are in the throes of a mid life crisis, so they went out and bought Harleys, Kawasakis, bandanas, and a spiffy leather jacket. They were tinkering with their bikes, and were actually taking over one of the handicapped spaces, which kinda pissed me off. I figured that they weren’t in our parking lot because they needed office supplies, but when I walked into the store, I saw that the place was crawling with members of the bad-ass motorcycle gang in search of office supplies. It was just odd.

Rewarding stupidity
I am of the opinion that our corporate headquarters actually encourages customers to act like a bunch of jerks. For instance, a guys called our store and wanted to order the $499 PC bundle from the PREVIOUS WEEK’S ad. We told him sorry, but that offer expired and you won’t be able to get the rebates that knock the bundle down to $499. He called corporate customer service, and they call us and tell us that we have to give him a similar IN-STORE Hewlett Packard bundle for $499, even though that bundle sells for over $1000 (the bundle that he originally wanted was one that you have to custom order down at the store, and it is shipped to you in 2-3 weeks). So, congratulations to that customer, who didn’t read the “offer good until” part of the ad, and was rewarded with an automatic $500 discount (no waiting 4 months for the rebate checks!) and a nice computer that he could pick up from the store that same day!

There have also been a few people that turn in their rebate forms late and are then told by the company that fulfills the rebate requests “We’re sorry, but the due date has already passed. No money for you!” I know this happened a few times for one particular computer bundle (rebates were for $300). A few people turned in their rebate slips two weeks late, and when they found out they weren’t getting their money, they called corporate headquarters to complain. And what does corporate do? They just give them the $300! So, once again, several customers fail to exercise the basic skill of reading the expiration date on their rebate form, and corporate headquarters rewards their stupidity with a princely sum of $300! Way to go, corporate headquarters!

It’s not always corporate that gives in to the pressure of irate customers. I had a guy and his son bring in a computer they had bought SIX MONTHS AGO, and they wanted to exchange it because it had a virus on it. Ok, umm, first off, there is a 30 day return policy, after 30 days you have to contact the manufacturer. Second off, you want to return the computer because it’s infected with a virus? Have you been updating the Norton Anti-Virus software that CAME INSTALLED on your machine? Have you downloaded the Windows Updates? Are you being careful when it comes to downloading files and opening e-mail attachments? Oh, of course, not! So, the customer, instead of taking responsibility for anything, demands a brand new computer! My CSM and I told him our return policy and gave him suggestions on how to rid his machine of the virus. He asked to speak to a manager, so we called one of our assistant managers to the customer service desk. The guy explains to our asst. manager that he has a virus and wants to exchange it for a new computer. Our asst. manager turns to me and says “Lindsay, get a new machine out of lockup.” I was floored – we were giving this guy a brand new machine because his original one had a virus??? Ridiculous! So the asst. manager left, I got the new machine out, and the guy says to my CSM (in this haughty voice) “See, the manager would let me exchange it!”

You see, comrades, the moral of the story is, if you complain enough, the manager will give you what you want. Sometimes, the manager may refuse to cave in, and if he does, just give corporate a call, for they will be more than willing to fix any problems that may have been caused by your own stupidity.

I have no control over the products in our store
One thing I hated was when customers would get pissed that we wouldn’t have (insert random 50 year old product that probably no longer exists here). I had one customer that kept asking “Are you sure you don’t have (insert product here)?” YES I AM SURE. Customer goes away, and then comes back a few minutes later (I was stocking product). “Can I speak to the person that does your ordering?” I told him he would have to contact HQ in Florida, as they were the ones that determine which products we stock. Then the customer started ranting about how everything used to be so different “back in the day” when a mom and pop store could order you anything you want, blah blah blah. My co-worker and I just stood there like Uhhhh huh.

Another lady asked me to help her in the calendar refill section. I must admit that there were rather slim pickings…it looked like we hadn’t received any stock for some of the products in the past few weeks (although it kind of made sense considering 2004 is almost over, so why have large amounts of 2004 calendars on hand?) After I was unable to locate the product she wanted, she turned to me and said “YOU KNOW, PEOPLE STILL LIVE HERE IN THE SUMMER!” She thought that the lack of product was due to a belief that everyone flees the desert in the summer, which was true maybe 20 years ago, but not so much now. I guess she never considered that fact that not many people buy 2004 calendars in August.

My big fat faux pas
A customer called the store one day wanting to know why their custom order computer did not have speakers and a printer (apparently my moronic assistant manager told the customer that it did, when in fact, it did not). I kept running back and forth, looking for a record of the order. I would get back on the phone and say “Sir, what is your last name?” or “Sir, was there an order number on your packing slip?” Of course, the customer was of no help and was being a real jerk. I finally transferred the call to my CSM so she could deal with him. So what was my faux pas? The customer that I kept calling “sir” was a woman! Oops.

Frank Abagnale Jr. is in bed with the gel pen industry
If you’ve seen “Catch Me if You Can” you probably know who Frank Abagnale Jr. is (hint: Leo DiCaprio plays him). Well, apparently Mr. Abagnale appeared on a “Dateline” segment on forgery, and he said that the uni-ball Gel Impact pen was the pen he used to sign checks because it was nearly impossible for check forgers to “wash” checks after you’ve used this pen. Needless to say, every elderly person in the Coachella Valley came to our store to buy the gel pen. I was a bit perplexed as to why these people kept demanding this particular pen, or why they would like at me like I was an idiot when I couldn’t explain its anti-forgery features (I wasn’t aware of Abagnale’s recommendation until I asked my manager why all these people kept insisting on gel pens). So anyways, I think Abagnale is really just in bed with the gel pen mafia, and is telling all these old people to buy these pens so his shares of Sanford stock will go sky high.

What do the British know about economics?
This isn’t a customer story – it’s about an assistant manager. So, I told my assistant manager that I was leaving Office Depot and he asked where I was going. I told him graduate school, and he asked me what school, so I replied “The London School of Economics.” And what did my genius of an assistant manager say? “Ha! What do the British know about economics!?” I should have answered with some smart ass remark (”What the hell did you learn in business school exactly?!”) but I was honestly too stunned by his display of ignorance. What do the British know about economics??? I don’t know – Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes – who the hell are those guys??? Hmmm, some of the most influential people in the field of economics AND FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM. Wow, yeah, the British don’t know anything about economics! Looks like that business major slept through their economics classes.

I get stuck in the copy center
I walked into work one day and my assistant manager informed me that the copy center employee had called in sick, so I would now be manning the copy center for two hours until the CSM (who was well trained in the copy center) came in to work. I found this to be quite amusing, as I had no idea how to do anything in the copy center except make single or double sided copies (and trust me, there is a lot more to the copy center than just making copies). Being in the copy center is weird – In one sense, I felt protected while I was in the copy center, like I was in a castle and had a moat with an alligator that would quickly gobble up any customer who would dare ask me to help them pick out a refill for their pen. On the other hand, though, I did feel trapped in there – I couldn’t go hide anywhere if there was a sudden surge of customers demanding thousands of copies. Luckily, though, I only had a few customers (and all they wanted were a few copies – sweeeet), so I spent the majority of my time standing around watching these 10 year old kids race around on the old person go cart (you know, it’s the electric cart with the basket in the front) while their mom shopped for office supplies. They came perilously close to hitting a stack of HP printers, but I didn’t mind that much…all I could think was, great, now some old person is going to yell at us because the battery is drained. Some lady came up to me asking if our machines were “high speed machines” because she was “really in a hurry.” I was like “Uh, yeah, they are pretty fast.” So I put the paper in the machine, hit copy, and she said “Do you think you can ring me up now?” Ugh…OK. So I ring her up, go back to the machine, and realize that it was set on 200% for some reason, so the whole copy job was messed up. Ooops…so I had to do it all over again. That sucked, but that’s what you get for interrupting me while I’m trying to setup your copy job.

This is the price, if you don’t want to pay it, then you can’t have it
This guy wanted a cheap computer, so I showed him one for $299 (after rebates). He turns to me and says “What can we do about this price?” I was a bit perplexed…”Well, sir, the price is $299.” He asks if I can get a manager…I must have gave him a strange look because he said “IS THERE A PROBLEM?” So I get my manager and he asks her the same thing…she says the same thing as I do and he starts bitching about who can he talk to that’s “above us.” We tell him corporate HQ and the guy leaves pissed as hell. Then my manager is like “Why did you call me over?” Because the customer wanted you to magically change the price! OK, people, you need to get this through your head – this is NOT a yard sale or a Russian souvenir market. This is a BUSINESS, and the goal of this business is to make money by offering goods and services at a respectable price. We are not here to haggle with you over the price of a computer. Haggling is reserved for products such as fake fur hats, communist paraphernalia, and surplus Soviet military equipment. We do not offer such products at Office Depot, so if you are going to stand here and say “Can’t you do something about the price of this computer?” then please leave now.

No, I don’t know anything about these products
I am (or was) a “customer experience officer.” I am here to help you if you have any questions because trust me, I know more about these products than you do. This lady came in and wanted a laser printer. The only problem was, she wanted an insanely fast laser printer, but it had to be really small. I showed her the HP LaserJet 1012, which is a pretty compact printer, but at 15 pages per minute, it was just too slooooow for her. So, I went up and down the aisle showing her the different laser printers we had but it was either “way too big” or “way too slow” for her. So, because I don’t have the printer she is looking for, she says “You don’t know these printers. Can I talk to someone who knows about these?” Suuuure let me just run over and get one of my co-workers, who may be able to perform a magic trick and produce a small, fast laser printer. I told her that no, I knew the product, but I just didn’t have what she was looking for. So then she points at a printer and says “Well, you didn’t tell me about this printer. This is a LaserJet” Well, the reason I didn’t tell you about this printer is because it’s an INKJET. READ…THE…TAG. And I don’t know anything about printers? Whatever.

We are open from 7am to 9pm. But don’t worry – if you can’t fit us into your busy schedule then we’ll stay open late just for you!
One night I had a mom and son come into the store at 8:30 looking for a desktop PC and monitor…8:30 – no problem since we close at 9. I talk to them for about 15 minutes and the mom asks me “Does Best Buy have a larger selection of computers?” Well, I’m not going to lie to them so I say yes and they decide to run over to Best Buy and check them out…I tell them that we open at 7am in case they want to come back tomorrow and purchase the machine they were mulling over. Well, they leave and my asst. manager gives me a few tasks to do so all of us can get out of the store ASAP. It’s 9:05 and my asst. manager calls me to the front and guess who is there…the mom and her son, and they want to purchase the PC. I have no idea why my asst. manager let them in, but I told them that the registers had been shut down for the night…asst. manager says “No, I haven’t shut the system down, go ahead and ring them up.” UGGGGH. The mom says to her son “While I’m here we might as well get that desk set you want.” WTF! So much for getting out of there on time! So, we have to send a stock guy to pull the furniture, then ring them up, and then bring it all out to their car. Sooo annoying…we got out of the store at 9:40 (we’re only supposed to be there till 9:30 at the latest).

Then the next night, it is a few minutes after 9pm and I have closed the doors and put the metal gates down when this guy comes up to the door and shouts that he needs to exchange some packing tape he bought. I tell him we are closed and he yells “THIS TAPE IS RUINING MY BUSINESS!” Uh sure, whatever buddy…and you can’t wait to exchange the tape at 7am when we open? He asks to speak to the manager so I go and tell my CSM about the guy. She talks to him for a few minutes and lets him inside to exchange the tape! Remind me, what’s the point of having open hours for the store? Why not just cross them out and write “OPEN: whenever you want. We are here for YOU!” on the sign

Etc.
I noticed that the new shelf liners for the tech department were sent to us by “Zell Miller, Inc.” based in Atlanta, Georgia. Hmmm is Office Depot involved with the crazy “Democratic” Senator from Georgia? And what is Zell Miller, Inc. anyways?

Have you seen the horrible Office Depot commercials? Our manager made us put them on all the computers and play them at full blast to create a “lively” atmosphere. Whenever she left the floor I turned them off. I despised those commercials.

The “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld is my hero.

When you call the store and ask for a product we don’t have, I’ll probably tell you to check with Best Buy. Don’t ask me if I have their phone number. I’m not 411.

When I’m ringing your purchases up, GET OFF YOUR DAMN CELLPHONE!

Don’t yell “THAT’S YOUR JOB!” when I ask you if you’ve called the manufacturer to resolve a problem with your equipment. It’s not my job. You bought the product more than 30 days ago, so it’s all in your hands now. I could care less if your machine is broken.

Stay out of the receiving area. It’s not for you. We are not hiding products back here. There is dangerous equipment. GO AWAY.

I love when people bring up a product and are amazed when it rings up for a price higher than they thought it would be. “But it says $19.99!”

“Yes, sir. That is the price after the rebate.”

“Well that’s misleading! How am I supposed to know it was a rebate?”

UMMM…because it says AFTER REBATE on the price tag? Hello? Reading?

Office Depot is pronounced “Office Deep-oh” NOT “Office Depp-oh” or “Depp-ott.” The T is silent, comrade.
Thanks for paying for your purchase with 200 pennies. “Haha, I’m glad to finally get rid of these! They’ve been sitting around the house forever!” Well, thanks, just what Office Depot needed – 200 pennies!

I don’t know every single freaking machine and all of its functions and error messages and I can’t guide you over the phone. READ your instruction manual.

Well, that’s the end of my adventures in customer service at Office Depot. It’s weird – I quit over a month ago and it feels like it was so long ago. I went back to pick up my final paychecks, and it was quite surreal. I cringed when I heard “Technology, Line 2″ over the loudspeaker, and then I was like, oh wait, I don’t work here anymore. THANK GOD.

I took my brother school supply shopping a few days ago. We went to Staples.

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It’s official…Victory over Office Depot Day has come and gone. I am no longer an employee of Office Supply Hell.

My last week of work was rather dull…there weren’t really any insane customers that I had to deal with. My schedule was a bit messed up, though. My last official day of work was supposed to be Friday, August 6th. When I got my schedule for this week, I noticed that my asst. manager had given me Friday off and scheduled me to work on Saturday, the 7th (WTF? You scheduled me for working a day after I quit). I went up to him and said “Hey, you scheduled me for Saturday but I’m not going to be here.” He replied “Well, I didn’t get a request slip for that day off” and I said “Noooo, but you got a little piece of paper saying that I’m not working here effective August 6th.” DUH. So the running joke (directed towards the asst. manager by my co-workers) has been “Who is this Lindsay girl that is starting on Saturday? Wow, and she is in the tech department, too. What a coincidence!”

Anyways, I was scheduled to work 7-3:30 on Thursday, but on Sunday my asst. manager asked me if I wanted to switch to the 3:30-9:30 shift and I said yes because I hate waking up for the 7am shift. Well, I don’t know what happened but I got a call at 7:30am yesterday from the other asst. manager wanting to know where the hell I was…so I got into work at 8:45am…haha, way to start off my last day of work! I actually accomplished a lot of work, even though my co-workers kept asking me why I wasn’t just riding out the clock…I dunno, just seems like actually doing stuff makes the time go by a lot faster. I sold a few laptops, printers, etc and my managers asked “How many Kempers (extended warranties) did you sell with those?” Ummm…well…none. We got a new store manager (you see, our store has been without a manager since April…we were being run by two assistant managers). Anyways, the new manager is pretty nice but she is really into selling these damn extended warranties. She had an easel with a big pad of paper placed at the front of the store to track how many Kempers are sold each day (of course, it doesn’t say anything about warranties on the pad of paper…just the employees name and how many they have sold…so the customers have no clue what it is there for). I, for some reason, was not blessed with the ability to sucker people into buying an expensive extended warranty (that, and I just don’t care). I will usually ask the customer if they want to purchase the warranty, and when they say “no” then I won’t push it any further. One time, though, a cashier was ringing up a desktop that this guy was purchasing…one of my co-workers in tech asked me if he was purchasing the Kemper, and I said that he wasn’t. So the co-worker says to the customer, “Sir, are you purchasing the extended warranty?” Customer says “No.” Co-worker says “Ohhh, brave man.” Ughhh…don’t…do…that. Mental note: make sure to tell co-worker that he sounds like sleazy used car salesman. Anyways, that’s my rant on extended warranties.

Oh, Lauren called me at work yesterday. I picked up the phone (”Technology department, how can I assist you?”) and she was like “Ahhh! My Dell computer is exploding!” That was amusing.

Well, I’m off to go do something with my newfound freedom…maybe, uh, go to Starbucks. Going to Oceanside for a week…leaving tomorrow…sweet.

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Due to the constant fluctuation in customer personalities, we cannot be responsible for the mental stability of any one member of our staff. (Seen in a gas station in Toronto, Canada)

A few nights ago I was watching the “Airline” and “Airline: UK” marathon on A&E, and seeing all the moronic customers hassle the Southwest Airlines and EasyJet employees inspired me to write another volume detailing the trials and tribulations of dealing with customers at office supply hell. (On a side note, why is “Growing up Gotti” on A&E? If anything, it should be on FOX)

To make this a bit more easier to read, I will attempt to divide this post into categories.

Do you work here?
I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but really, this has got to stop. People need to stop asking me if I work at Office Depot. I am wearing a hideous shirt that says “OFFICE DEPOT” above the pocket and a nametag that says “CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE OFFICER.” There is a U-boat (three tiered cart that we put merchandise on that needs to be stocked) filled with boxes…I proceed to take an orange box cutter out of my pocket and use it to slice open a box…I then remove the product from the box and place it onto a shelf. A customer wanders into my aisle and observes me at work. They then ask me “Excuse me, do you work here?” No, of course I don’t work here – I am doing all of this for fun! I understand that some customers may simply be saying this because they do not know of a better way to ask for help. OK, fair enough, but why can’t they just say “Excuse me, can you help me find something?” I don’t get it…

A few days ago I was stocking binders USING THE LADDER THAT SAYS “FOR EMPLOYEE USE ONLY” when a lady comes up to me and says “Do you work here?” I nodded my head and replied “MmmHmm” and the lady said “IS THAT A ‘YES?’” Whoa, flashback to first grade – I’m being yelled at by a nun…oh wait, back to reality – I’m standing here, fully uniformed, product in hand, being asked by a moron if I work here, and when I do not loudly shout “YES”, I am berated by aforementioned moron.

I know you are leaving, but…
The employee break room, home to our lockers and time clock, is located at the very back of the store. Therefore, to enter and exit the building without being stopped by a customer requires several forms of covert action. Unfortunately, this does not always work, and you may be stopped by a customer while you are happily on your way out of the store. This has happened to me several times…I have just left the break room, have my bag slung over my shoulder and my car keys out, when a customer in the furniture department (the wretched department that you must pass through) will say to me “I know you are on your way out, but could you answer a few questions for me?” UMMMM…NO. Hello, I am off the clock!! Usually I just tell them that furniture isn’t my department and I will send someone up at the front to help them…so annoying!

Cashier training school
My friend was cashiering at the ink depot register (ink depot is the cute little name that corporate has given to the area where all of our ink is located) and I was at the ink depot computer looking up some information on a printer. A lady came to her register and paid cash, and when my friend gave her change back to her, the lady said in this bitchy voice “You know, you really shouldn’t give change like that!” Now, I didn’t realize there was a proper way to give change, but the way my friend gave the lady her change is how many cashiers do it (placing bills in the hand, and then the coins) but apparently this lady found this so disagreeable that she felt the need to berate my friend, saying things like “When you give change like this, it’s so hard to put it away. Don’t they train you properly?” Oh, no…I’m sorry, I must have slept through the cashier training class in which we were taught how to properly give change to picky customers.
I hope you feel better now that you’ve had the opportunity to bitch at a cashier…I mean, if your life is so pathetic that you berate a lowly employee on proper change giving techniques, then wow I feel sorry for you!

You need the exercise!
Another cash register story- this one happened to an employee who is a bit on the heavy side. Well, a customer comes up to the register to check out and it just so happens that the one lunchbox she wants to purchase is the one that is missing a bar code, so there is no way to ring it up without getting another lunchbox. My co-worker paged some employees to go find out the price of the lunchbox, but they were all busy helping customers (and the cashiers are not supposed to leave their register). Lady gets pissed so she says “FINE, I will get another lunchbox myself!” She grabs another lunchbox and comes up to the register and says to my co-worker “You know, YOU should have gotten the lunchbox! You look like you could use the exercise!” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a customer that is badgering the cashier about his weight. I swear, some people can be real jerks.

No pricetag! It must be free!
If you are ever shopping, do not say that to an employee. Do you know how many times we have heard that? Do you think you are the first person to come up with that clever little joke? Well, you’re not, so stop….please.

Post-it note lady from hell
Old lady walks into the store one night, looks at my CSM (customer service manager) who is standing at a register and is outfitted in the Office Depot uniform and says to him “DO YOU WORK HERE?” My CSM says yes and asks how he can help her. She pulls out her Post-it Note Pop Up Dispenser and asks him if he knows anything about it. He says no, and she starts bitching about how no one in the store knows anything about the product. My CSM calls me to the front of the store (because obviously Post-it Notes fall under the technology department, not the supplies department!) I go to the front and the lady points at her Post-it Note Dispenser and asks me if I use one…I said that no, I do not use Post-it Note Dispensers (I wasn’t going to lie – indeed I am not so pathetic that I need a pop-up dispenser for Post-it Notes. I can peel them off the block myself, thank you very much!) So it turns out that telling the customer the truth was not such a good idea. She yelled at me “Jesus, doesn’t ANYBODY in this store know ANYTHING about the products that are sold here!!!!!!!!”

This is a Post-it Note Dispenser. If you are going to yell at me about this product, then you really really really need to get a hobby…

She then pulls out several pads of Post-it Notes and throws them on the counter, shrieking “I can’t get this to work! I pull one Post-it note off, and the other one does not pop up!” Oh, well, God, the world is just coming to an absolute end now isn’t it? My CSM goes into the cash office and retrieves the Post-it Note dispenser that is sitting in there (the one that belongs to Office Depot…I guess since we need a dispenser for our Post-it Notes we are also quite pathetic). I open it up and show the lady why hers isn’t working – our dispenser has the dispenser refills…they are accordion-like, whereas the ones she purchased were just regular Post-it Notes. I told her she could get the refills on aisle 14…she snaps back “SHOW ME!” Well, OK. Walk her to aisle 14. Show her Post-it Note dispenser refills that are clearly marked “For Popup Note Dispensers.”

These are refills for the Post-it Note Dispenser. See, it says so on the package!

Lady points to package of regular Post-it Notes and says “See, these say ‘Super Sticky Notes.’ I purchased these and they don’t work!” WHO CARES IF THEY SAY SUPER STICKY?!?! They are regular Post-it Notes, NOT popup dispenser refills. I tell her that “Super Sticky” simply refers to the fact that they are much stickier than the previous generation of Post-it Notes (and yes, I just totally made that up on the spot…well, you have to admit that it does make sense, eh?).

These are regular Post-it Notes. These will NOT work in your dispenser!

She then says “This is so confusing! How are people supposed to know which ones are for the dispenser??” Again, I point to the package that says “For Popup Note Dispensers” and say “Ma’am, the refills say ‘For Popup Note Dispensers’ on the package.” She then remarks AGAIN that this is all so very confusing. WHAT THE HELL IS CONFUSING? If it says “For Popup Note Dispensers” on the package then wouldn’t you think to yourself “Hmmm…I think these are the refills for my popup note dispenser!” Again, I explain to her the difference between the Post-it notes. I was holding a large package of the dispenser notes – a pack of 12 blocks for about $12, and then she starts bitching about the price. Well, I guess that’s the price you pay for being a moron that has to have a dispenser for Post-it Notes! Anyways, I show her a smaller pack for $5. She is finally happy. As I am leaving the aisle she says “Oh, but these only come in yellow? I wish they came in the colors like the regular Post-it notes. You know us girls, we love our pretty colors.”

Yeah, definitely rolled my eyes at that one…

Crazy chair lady
It’s 9pm, and the announcement that we are closed has been made. I am stocking some products onto some shelves when a lady comes up to me and asks if we have a particular chair in blue. I take her over to the area where the boxes of chairs are (normally we keep the boxes of chairs in the back, but if a chair is on sale we will place a stack of boxes on the sales floor so the customer can get one by themselves) and open a box that is marked “royal” to show her what the fabric on the chair looked like (we only had the black chair on display). She doesn’t it like it. Fine, OK. I go back to stocking the shelves…a few minutes later I walked past the stack of chairs and discovered that she was still there, OPENING EVERY SINGLE BOX THAT WAS MARKED AS “ROYAL!” WTF??? Did she think that one royal might be different than the other royal, and after opening say, the third box that was marked as royal, maybe she would realize that hey, maybe all the chairs that say royal are the exact same color! Then she points to the pieces she has pulled out of one of the royal boxes and says to me “Can you assemble this?” Uhhh…no. Her son, who was with her, says “Mom, they are closed.” Does she go up to the register and pay for her products? No! She continues to walk around for another 10 minutes. HELLO!!! WE ARE CLOSED! You couldn’t come to the store during the 14 hours that we are open??? I would like to go home, thank you very much, but my managers wouldn’t go up to the lady and tell her that we are closed. How annoying!

Big shot lawyer wants to know where his damn furniture is!
Now this story is just weird…so my CSM gets this call from this judge/lawyer/whatever who wants to know where the hell his $12,000 furniture order is, but the only problem is, we have no record whatsoever of his order…not in the computer, no hard copies, NOTHING. My CSM asks the guy for some more info (order #, phone number that he used when he placed the order) and he said “I am out shopping right now! I don’t have that information with me!” Ummm…OK. So anyways, the guy is being a real pain in the ass. While my CSM was on the phone, an employee that was working in the furniture department came up to her and asked if she was talking to someone about furniture. My CSM asks the guy on the phone to hold for a moment and covers the mouthpiece with her hand. She tells the employee about the call, and the employee asks my CSM if the guy asked for her name…and then if he asked her to spell it. CSM answers that yes, he did. The employee then tells my CSM that she thinks the person on the phone is actually in the store…sitting in a chair in the furniture department not more than 30 feet from the CSM. To top it off, an employee in customer service paged another employee over the storewide intercom and my CSM heard the page over the phone…like it was coming from wherever the guy was…so yeah, this guy was SITTING IN OUR FURNITURE DEPARTMENT YELLING AT MY CSM ON HIS CELLPHONE! He never asked to speak to a manager while he was at Office Depot, nor did he inquire about a furniture order in person. Our best guess is that the guy placed his order with another company and that he accidentally called us instead of whoever he placed the order with (he told my CSM that we loaned him 12 chairs to use until his order came in, which we would never do since it is against company policy). People actually do this quite a bit…they will call the store (usually about a copy job) wanting to know when it will be completed, and some poor employee is running around crazy trying to find a record of this order being placed (all the while, the customer is bitching “Why aren’t my copies ready?!?! What do you mean you can’t find my order?!?!”)…and as it usually turns out, the “customer” actually placed the order with OFFICEMAX. Damn people…anyways, that furniture guy definitely deserves the “moron of the year” award!

Obligatory Office Depot Dream
Sometimes I have dreams about Office Depot…sad, I know, but since I spend about 40 hours a week there, it’s bound to happen. A while back I dreamt that I went to work and was informed that I was being transferred to an Office Depot store in Philadelphia. OK, first off, WTF, I was being transferred like I was in the army or something, and second off, Philadelphia?!?! Yeah, great. Anyways, I got to Philly and really hated it because a) I was still working at Office Depot, b) I was in Philly, and c) It was winter. Hopefully after I leave Office Depot I will no longer dream about that hell!

Oh yeah, tomorrow is my last day! Let me repeat this: TOMORROW IS MY LAST DAY OF WORKING AT OFFICE SUPPLY HELL! That does not mean that this is the last installment of “Adventures in Customer Service”, though. On the contrary, I have quite a few stories left – perhaps enough to fill an additional two volumes!

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I will give you a hint:

And now I’m off to Oceanside for the weekend. Be back in the desert on Sunday.

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This is not actually a volume of customer service adventures (one coming soon, though) but rather a complaint about our store management. Woooo…exciting!

About a week and a half ago I asked for the 29th and 30th of July off so that I could go to San Diego/Oceanside with Kat and our moms (to see a museum exhibit or something). It shouldn’t have been a big deal…it’s not like I was asking for additional days off…I just wanted my 2 days off to be on the 29th and 30th. Employees request days off ALL THE TIME. I even wrote “PLEASE” under my request! Well, I got my schedule today and guess what? Yeah, didn’t get my days off…I got the 30th off, but not the 29th…how lame. I don’t really know why my manager (actually, ASSISTANT manager…we don’t have a real manager because he quit a few months ago) is being a jerk and didn’t let me have my days off, but whatever…I did work that entire week of overnighters and I did come in at 5am last week so the manager wouldn’t be opening the store with just one employee (both of the stockers called in sick the day before, but that is really an entirely different story…so the other manager called me and asked if I could come in at 5am to work on freight…since I’m a moron I said yes). So apparently agreeing to work the horrible shifts and helping the managers out doesn’t give you any pull…well, fine. Actually, this is a trait that our manager has…it’s well known among the employees: piss off the manager, and he’ll give you a horrible schedule. (OMG, is this what they taught you to do in your online business school courses???) I’m still trying to figure out what I might have done to piss him off…maybe I’m not selling enough extended warranties!

Anyways I was really pissed off at work today…there were hadly any customers and I didn’t have much to do, so it was quite boring. Our managers have been pushing us to fill out the “Employee Engagement Survey”, which is an anonymous online survey that asks you questions such as “Office Depot is a great place to work: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither agree nor disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.” Other notable questions were “You are not actively looking for another job” and “You believe the company is concerned about you and values your input as an employee” (or something like that). My personal favorite was “You trust the CEO and other executive board members.” Since I, by nature, trust very few business executives, I answered that I strongly disagreed with that statement. The rest of the questions I answered quite honestly…I mean, really, I didn’t want to be too cynical. If there was something I agreed with then I would say so. But then I’m at work today, in a bad mood (due to being denied San Diego goodness) and bored out of my mind, so I decided to take the survey again and let corporate know just how strongly I feel about the functioning of our store. Immature? Perhaps, but so is screwing with employee schedules! It would be hilarious if human resources scanned the survey results and called the store to ask why all of our employees are bitter and despondent. (OMGWTF, store 944 has the poorest employee morale in the entire United States!) I know that I am certainly not the only employee that has filled out the survey accordingly…and the managers are most likely being pressured by corporate to ensure that all the employees fill out the survey (otherwise they wouldn’t be wandering around asking “Did you take the employee survey yet??? Make sure you do!”) Heh, yeah, I sure did take it!

Fascists.

That is all.

Gotta work tomorrow…might have something good to post when I get home.

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It’s been over a month since I posted my last installment of “Adventures in Customer Service.” That being said, I think it’s about time I present my readers with yet another volume detailing my adventures in office supply hell.
I’ve decided that my target date for departure will be 1 September 2004 unless the Parental Administration issues a “stop loss” order and I am forced to serve longer in the trenches of Office Depot. Actually, no, just kidding. There is no way I will be staying after September 1st – in fact, I am trying to decide if I want to leave in mid-August…guess I’ll make up my mind soon enough. Nevertheless, I have added a cute little javascript to my site (scroll down and look to the right) that counts down the days until Victory over Office Depot Day (hereafter referred to as “V-OD Day”). My friends, there will be parades up and down Highway 111 on V-OD Day…Starbucks for all the proletariats! Yes, comrades, it will be a wonderful day indeed.

I actually spent a week working the graveyard shift (9pm – 5:30am). Well, technically we don’t have a graveyard shift, we were just doing overnighters for the tech department “remerch” (aka rearranging the entire technology department. Fun!) I really hated the late hours because I have a hard time sleeping during the day when it’s light out. Thus, I was a zombie for a majority of the week. There are a few good things about overnighters, though, chief among them being the fact that you don’t have to deal with any irate customers. You also don’t have to wear the ridiculous Office Depot uniform. The BEST part, though, was the overtime pay. We usually didn’t get out at 5:30am – got out at 7am most days, and one day we were even there until 9:15am (yeah, 12 straight hours of Office Depot). Therefore, we got a nice amount of overtime pay added to our paychecks. So let me just say HURRAY DEMOCRATS for introducing overtime pay laws and fighting to protect them and BOO REPUBLICANS for trying to repeal overtime pay laws and thus make us all Office Depot serfs.

Oh, and oddly enough, people call Office Depot at 1am, 2am, etc to ask questions. (Do they think anyone is going to pick up at 1:30am??? Imagine how surprised they are when someone actually does).

So anyways, the tech department looks pretty good right now…I guess all that hard work paid off, although I don’t really care all that much. I am back on my normal schedule, but they cut all of our hours for the past few weeks so that corporate can boost their earnings and impress their stockholders with the next quarterly report (capitalist scum!). Again, I don’t really care that my hours have been cut (instead of 40 hrs per week I am doing 32) but instead of taking an 8 hour day off of my schedule and giving me an extra day off, they just give me shorter shifts (but still have me on 5 days a week). That’s annoying – I wish I could just have another day off, but whatever.

My first day back on the job (after doing the week of overnighters) was pretty crazy (it was a Sunday). I think all the insane people come in to the store on Sunday. Most likely that is due to the fact that our ad comes out on Sunday, and everyone has to rush down to Office Depot to score those unbelievably great deals (sarcasm). We actually have a large number of people lining up outside the store on Saturday and Sunday mornings waiting for us to open. Sunday, I can understand why because of the ad, but Saturday??? Personally, I have better things to do at 9am on Saturday – like, well, SLEEP. Anyways, that Sunday I was helping a customer with a keyboard and a lady comes up to me demanding to know where the TV stands are. First off, I HATE when customers come up to me while I am helping another customer and rudely interrupt. I know you are used to getting everything your way, ma’am, but you are just going to have to wait. Secondly, we don’t sell TV stands, so I was a bit perplexed. “TV stands?” I said. “Yes, TV stands! They are right here in YOUR AD” she replied. I glanced at the ad she was holding in her hand. “Ma’am,” I tried to say without busting out laughing, “that is an OfficeMax ad. You are in Office Depot.” She then pulls out her cell phone and starts bitching to her husband. Ah, which reminds me of another one of my pet peeves: customers on their cell phones. I’ll be helping a customer out and they’ll get a phone call and stand there just talking forever. I want to leave when they do that, but I can’t, so I just stand there while so and so discusses how Aunt Elma is doing or how their latest trip to Hawaii was, blah blah. It’s like why can’t they just say, “Hey, can I call you back in 5 minutes?” Another thing that I find to be quite annoying is people with Nextel phones. Those are the ones that can act like walkie talkies, so they walk around the store with the volume as high as possible talking to whoever. It’s like wow, thanks for entertaining all of us with your phone conversation THAT CAN BE HEARD 5 MILES AWAY. Seriously, I hate those Nextel phones.

That same Sunday, we had a guy come in and buy 2 computer bundles. Apparently he is one of those problematic customers that likes to buy expensive products and then return them. So here he is again buying more expensive computers. Well, he was upset over something…I never really found out what it was, but he yelled at one of the cashiers because she told him that the manager was on a conference call. He said she was lying (she wasn’t, the manager really was on a conference call, and besides, why would she lie about that?) so she sent him over to talk to the CSM (Customer Service Manager) which is a position directly below assistant manager. The guy goes over to the CSM to bitch about something and he is yelling that we are trying to scam him. Another customer in the store asks the guy what is going on and the guy keeps yelling “THEY ARE TRYING TO SCAM ME!” The other customer tells him to chill out and stop making a scene and the guy yells back “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!” (OMG! Vice President Cheney, is that YOU?!?!) Yeah, the entire store heard that one. Dead silence after that…was rather amusing.

Like I said, lots of crazy people on Sundays. A lady called and asked me for prices on our typewriters, so I went and wrote down the models and their prices. It took me less than a minute to get that info, but when I went to pick up the line again, no one was there – she hung up on me! I turned to a co-worker and was like “WTF! This lady hung up on me! I had her on hold for less than a minute!” My co-worker asked if the lady was inquiring about typewriters – apparently, this was the 6th time this lady called in the past hour. Whenever someone came back on the line to tell her the info about the typewriters, she had already hung up. Now that is just odd if you ask me – wouldn’t it be much easier to stay on the line for 45 seconds instead of hanging up and calling repeatedly? Well, whatever. So anyways, a few minutes later she calls back and my co-worker picks up the phone, the lady started yelling “Look, you make $7 an hour. I’m an emergency room nurse that makes $30 an hour, and I don’t have time for this! I need the prices of your typewriters!” My co-worker explained to her that the store was extremely busy now, etc and apologized for having to put her on hold but that’s just the way it is. The lady hung up and didn’t call back. Good! I say to hell with her! Go harass the employees at Staples!

We have had a lot of customers bring back their computers and complain about viruses on them. I always tell the customers to update their anti-virus software and download the Windows Update, but they are lazy and don’t want to do that. I even had two guys say that the worm CAME INSTALLED ON THEIR COMPUTER. I told them that it was impossible that the Sasser worm was installed on their machine by Compaq. They said they never connected to the internet so therefore Compaq must have installed the worm. Bullshit, I knew they were lying (”No, I NEVER connected my DSL to the computer! Compaq installed the Sasser Worm! I would like a new computer.”). Yeah, I’m sure the Compaq techs at the factory were like “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s install the Sasser Worm on all these machines! I’m soooo bored with just installing AOL and MusicMatch!” GIVE ME A BREAK! So yeah, I don’t like it when customers lie to me – if you are going to make stuff up, I’m not going to help you out.

One customer came in and said that he bought some paper from us a week ago but he left it in the parking lot/didn’t fully unload his shopping cart/some other random excuse and wanted some more. He gave me his receipt and WANTED ME TO GIVE HIM FREE PAPER BECAUSE HE LOST HIS! What the!!!!!! Sure, buddy, whatever you say, next thing you know you’ll come in saying “Uhhh I bought this Palm Pilot last week and I misplaced it so can I have a new one?”

Speaking of returns, we get so many because people don’t want to take the time to read their instruction manual or learn how to use the product. I wonder how much money businesses lose because people don’t want to read the damn manual!

This one guy wanted some mechanical pencils so I got him a pack of 3 for $2.49…he asked if he could return them if he didn’t like them. Well, sure you can, but is it even worth the gas money to drive out to Office Depot to return a $2.49 product???

Sometimes we get customers that are frequent visitors to a site called fatwallet.com. This is a site that lists daily deals and hot buys from retail outlets (”Such and such product FREE AFTER REBATES! Buy one pack of batteries and get 1,000 packs for FREE!”) The people that frequent that website can be rather annoying, to say the least. I had a guy come in one day looking for a digital camera. I asked him if I could help him with anything and he pointed at a $349 camera and asked how much it was. I was a bit perplexed, because the price tag was right there in front of him. “Well, sir, it’s $349,” I replied. He said “Ohh, well fatwallet.com says you guys have a Kodak camera for $99 and I’m pretty sure it’s this one.” I tell him we don’t have any $99 digital cameras…he proceeds to have me check the price of every Kodak camera we have just in case one of them has magically come down in price. I run them all through the computer and, as I suspected, there was no $99 camera. Thus, customer leaves store with his dreams of owning a $99 camera crushed and his faith in the fatwallet.com gods reduced to zero.

This is getting a bit long so I will mention one last story and be on my way. So we had this customer that bought a rather expensive computer system, and he was a doctor and he let you know that he was a doctor (yeah, you know the type…talks to you like you’re a damn idiot and think you should bow before them because they are a doctor). Anyways, this guy kept calling us the day after he bought his system, complaining about everything, asking how to do everything, etc (I am under the impression this guy has NEVER operated a computer before). And every time you would get on the phone with him he would treat you like an idiot, because you know HE IS A DOCTOR and I am a lowly serf! I actually don’t know whether he was a medical doctor or a guy that got his doctorate in a non-medical field…would be interested to find out…anyways, he called AGAIN wanting to know how to use some software and my manager picked up the phone. He put the good doctor on hold and told me that the doctor was on the phone. I told him that there was no way in hell I was taking another one of his calls, so the manager agreed to take the call if I would stand there and help him if he didn’t know an answer to one of the guy’s questions. Well, while my manager was trying to explain to the guy how he could load software onto the machine the guy yelled “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ENGLISH?” Wow. Good thing I didn’t take that call, I would have said “No! No hablo ingles! Nyet! Ya ne panimayu pa angliski!” I’m sure the good doctor would have LOVED my sarcasm.

OK, so I think that’s enough writing for tonight. I actually have a lot more stories, but those will have to wait until I write Volume VI. In closing, I will now complain about the fact that Office Depot is open on Independence Day. Yes, comrades, we are open on July 4th, so if you run out of staples and post it notes and ABSOLUTELY NEED THEM for your Independence Day BBQ, be sure to stop by. I will most likely not get a day off on July 4th, which sucks. What do you want to bet that all those hacks in the corporate office are off watching parades or attending BBQs while us serfs wander around our store mindlessly because THERE ARE NO CUSTOMERS? So anyways, a big thanks to Office Depot for being such a pro-American company and keeping the stores open so they can suck every last dollar out of any customer that happens to walk into our store on July 4th.

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I’m bored, and don’t have much to write about. Office Depot has been alright…not too busy, but that still doesn’t mean I want to be there. Here are a few places I’d rather be than Office Depot:

- Death Valley in July
- stuck in traffic on Interstate 10, with a broken CD player and nothing but Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on the radio
- a Toby Keith concert in (insert random southern state here)
- seated next to several crying babies while on an 11 hour trans-Atlantic flight
- New Jersey

My work schedule for next week is pretty messed up. On Monday I work 6pm-2:30am and from Tuesday – Friday I work from 9pm-5:30am (and yes, you read that correctly). We are “remerching” the tech department which basically means that we are moving everything around and we can only accomplish this when there are no customers in the store, hence my crazy work hours. My sleep schedule is going to be extremely whacked, but I suppose it will be similar to the all-nighters I would pull during finals week…but instead of cramming my head full of facts about the Cold War, I will be moving merchandise around.

When I was in Moscow last year I purchased a map of the Soviet Union (along with a few trillion souvenirs). I finally got around to having it framed…now it hangs on my wall like so:

Have you ever wondered how rich people protest? In their limos, of course! Exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky organized a protest against the Russian government by attaching signs to 100 limos and parking them outside the Russian Embassy in London:

The limousines drove up and down Park Lane in West London before parking outside the Russian Embassy adjacent to Hyde Park. There, Berezovsky displayed dozens of placards and banners, whose slogans included “Free Khodorkovsky,” “Russian Business vs. Police State,” and “Russian Business vs. KGB.”

Moscow has been named as one of the 5 finalists for the 2012 summer Olympic games. The other finalists are New York, Paris, London and Madrid. Honestly, I don’t think Moscow stands a chance against the other cities…I’m guessing the Olympic committee just named them a finalist in order to boost the self-esteem of Muscovites….or, better yet, a Russian mobster bribed a few of the committee members (hmm remember the figure skating scandal?)
Russian border guards have been ordered to deal politely with travelers. Apparently, the guards now have to smile and greet you…wow…can’t wait to see this.

Dell is also running some amusing ads in Russia…I didn’t know Dell sold computers in Russia, but it turns out that they certainly do.

The ads for Dell computers go further still. One features a cartoonish anti-globalist babbling something about the power of the multinationals. In another we see a no less cartoonish intellectual complaining about the vulgarity of advertising and the corruption of the Russian language by Americanisms. Both characters then open their Dell notebook computers and the breezy announcer reminds us that whatever we might think about America, the quality of its computers is beyond doubt. You can’t help noticing that these ads provide no information about the computer itself and are prepared to sacrifice the product and even the brand to promote a more general message. Indeed, the point is that these ads are not about computers. They are intended to convince us that the system all around us is good, and that its critics cannot be trusted.

It’s a shame that the Russians never had an equivalent to the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” commercials that we had here in the U.S.

GWU was mentioned again in The Onion. I think this is the third time that a fictional character has hailed from my alma mater. Hmm is a GW alum writing for The Onion? If so, one thing is for certain…they must not have been a member of the Hatchet’s writing staff…those guys wouldn’t know “funny” if it ran up to them and pummeled their pathetic existence into the ground…they throw a few dirty jokes and poorly Photoshopped pictures in the April Fool’s edition and proclaim themselves to be masters of humor. (If you didn’t notice already, I am not the biggest fan of the Hatchet).

Enough rambling for now…

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