Perhaps Alan’s expectations were out of line. He bought a package of one hundred certificates at Staples, expecting it to contain one hundred certificates that he could use for whatever award he was giving out. Instead, four of the sheets had been folded and wasted. A small indignity in modern consumerism, but an annoying one.

At Staples, I purchased a package of 100 Printed Certificates (see
attached), manufactured by Gartner Studios. It was a multicolor package
of 5 colors, which worked out nicely because for several of the colors I
needed exactly 20 sheets. On the front of the package, the corners of 4
of the sheets were bent over so that the colors could be easily seen.

You can probably guess what I found. There were indeed 100 sheets of
paper in the package, but only one color yielded 20 usable sheets. The
other four colors each had 19 usable sheets, plus 1 sheet of useless
folded paper.

Was I asking too much by expecting 100 sheets of paper that I could
actually print on? Or are we so inured of deceptive advertising that I
should just sigh and get on with life?

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