Kinko's Copies

All hail, ye merry potheads!

I consider myself a fairly patient person, but I'm steaming right now.

Let me explain. When I'm not busy being The Pirate King, brandishing a cutlass in one hand and a fountain pen in the other, I have a day job as a mild-mannered corporate secretary of a small Internet-based company. Right now we need to print up some business cards for two of our people, and I have spent the better part of a week wrangling with the staff at the Kinko's Copies location in downtown Bellevue, Washington, trying to get the job done. We still need those cards.

Before I go on, please keep in mind that I have a semi-libertarian attitude about recreational drug use. I would never try an illegal drug, but if others choose to partake, that's their business—as long as they don't let it interfere with their job performance. With that said, Kinko's employees provide a potent argument against widespread marijuana legalization. Wonder where all the stoners went after high school? They got jobs at Kinko's.

There is, of course, some advantage to this setup. The powers that be at Kinko's seem to hire those who forgot to study for their drug tests because, well, it's cheap labor and they want to keep their costs down. The disadvantage, of course, is that they experience heavy staff turnover and no sense of professionalism among the rank-and-file employees. As a result, customers who need more than just a self-service printing job can expect service ranging from the merely indifferent to the grossly incompetent.

Take the current situation with our business cards. We'd actually had Kinko's print up cards for other employees in the past, since the service is relatively inexpensive and they have a minimum order of 10 business cards—useful for a small company like ours. We'd kept a copy of the disk they used the last time they printed our cards, with all the information they needed in a format their computers could understand. I brought this disk in, along with a copy of one of our current business cards and a paper with the names, titles and contact information of the two employees who needed new cards printed. I explained that I wanted two runs of cards with a layout just like the ones already on the disk, except they needed to be printed using the new contact information on the paper. I also wanted them to make us two copies of the disk for backup purposes, since we use PCs in our offices and the disk was formatted for Mac. OK, fine, could I come back the next day and check the print proofs? I could.

The next day, I came down and checked the proofs. There was a problem with the company logo, which they said they would fix, so I signed my approval. They then told me I could wait until 8 p.m. to have the cards done, or come back on Monday to pick up the finished cards. I opted for Monday pickup.

On Monday, I happened to deal with the store manager, which was fortunate since the business cards—although printed correctly this time—had all been cut off-center, almost shaving off the top of our business logo. I pointed this out to the manager and he apologized, telling me they'd do another run and take 10% off the total price of the order. (To give credit where it's due, all the Kinko's managers with whom I've dealt are fairly conscientious about their work, since they envision a future with the company.)

Well, I came back today. The business cards were ready. They were printed beautifully, cut cleanly and accurately—and had the wrong names and contacts. I asked the girl behind the counter why she had done this, and she said, "It's exactly the same run as last time." I informed her that no, it was not—the last time the information on the cards was correct, they'd just been cut incorrectly. "Well, that's what I was told to do." But that's not what I asked for on the print job. "Look—"

She was all ready to argue with me about how they had done the right job, and it was I, the customer, who didn't have the details straight. I politely broke it off and said, "Look, it's been a week now, and I'm no closer to getting these cards printed than I was last Friday. What do you say I just pay for the two disk copies and we call it done?"

That would have been fine, except—you guessed it—they hadn't made any copies of the disk either. At least they'd kept the original disk, which I promptly took back into my possession before I left.

So now I'm back at square one—actually, I'm worse off than I was last Friday, because I've wasted a week in the Pot-head Playground and have nothing to show for it. Today I'm looking for a real, professional printer. If you have suggestions, I'd be delighted to hear them.

Just don't mention Kinko's, or you're in for a keelhauling.

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