Richard had to print out a few pages stored on an SD card. Fortunately, the printers at FedEx Kinko’s let you insert a flash drive, SD card, or even your phone and zap them right to the printer. How advanced! Unfortunately, not advanced enough that it could cope with the fifth page of his document. He had to ask the employees behind the counter to help instead. Their definition of “help,” unfortunately, was “make the customer wait an hour to print out one page.”

He writes:

I stopped by FedEx Kinko’s in [redacted] to print out what I thought would be five quick pages. They were in PDF format stored on a SD Card, so I used the copier. They have a function where you can put in a variety of media (flash drive, SD Card, even a USB to your phone) and print media from there.

It took me no less than five minutes to print each of the first four pages, with a very kindly but equally frustrated floor employee hovering over me. I simply refused to take it to the PC area where I would have to pay a per-minute fee in addition to a higher price per page.

Then came the fifth page, which the machine simply would NOT print out. After several attempts, the floor employee told me to take it to the counter and explain the situation; that surely they would be happy to print out that one remaining page.

When I approached the counter, there were two employees standing there and helping no one. One was doing something on a computer. After waiting what was surely two minutes, I announced my presence to them. They looked up, annoyed, and then asked what I wanted. I explained the situation. Their response? “Sure. It will take around an hour.”

I incredulously asked if she was serious, and she confirmed this. I told her that I understand that they probably have other projects to print out that were submitted first, but that given my special circumstances (the time I had already spent and the malfunction of their own machinery) it seemed like an extremely small request to have one page printed out. “I’m sorry,” she said in the most un-sorry voice I’ve ever heard.

One final time I reiterated to her: “So, I’ve spent half an hour trying to print these documents out, and because your own machinery is causing me to be unable to finish, I am asking you to literally take sixty seconds to print out one page because I am literally unable to do so the way I had intended; and you are telling me you can’t do it, unless I wait an hour?”

“That’s right.”

Needless to say I walked out very pissed off, while other customers looked on in horror and the floor employee who had previously been helping me offered apologetic gestures.

I suppose they felt they could just treat me like crap because it was a ten cent transaction, but for all they know I go in there all of the time, or I own a business that submits online orders on a regular basis! Very, VERY disappointed.

Wait, why not go over to the computers and print the last page out there? Do the computers not have SD readers? Either way, poor form of the Keepers of the Copiers to not take a moment and explain why they couldn’t print the document out right away. “We have a rush order of 10,000 Christmas cards some guy made with the Mayan calendar and his cats!” For example.

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