Courtesy of Seven Morris via Flickr

I had the most ridiculous customer service experience today at FedEx Office  (ie. Kinkos). It was so ridiculous, it deserves its own blog post. Let me set the back-story for you:

I was having one of those “Office Space” moments at work. You know the kind, where I was about to take a bat to the copier/scanner/fax machine. This fickle beast is like a one of those old decrepit parrots: It has one mistress, and one mistress only – the secretary – and it takes a big shit on every one else who tries to get it to work. Unfortunately for me, the secretary was out sick today, so I was forced to try to rationalize with the thing.

I’m a bit of a hippy. I talk to inanimate objects. I don’t know what it is, but there seems to be some sort of weird mojo when it comes to me and technology, so that if I hate technology, it will make sure to hate me back. I try to always play nice, say nice things, send good energy towards the printer, make sure it’s working properly when a deadline is looming…. but there is something about me and this scanner. It’s a different creature. I can’t figure it out.

I was trying to scan this 70 page document into a pdf file. Seems simple in theory. It’s not, with this machine. I seriously tried to scan this document about 15 times. Every time I got to about, oh say, page 60 or so, it would decide to grab two of the pages, or freeze, or the feeder would jam, or the program would run out of memory and not save. I literally sat and mean-dogged the machine, watching it scan, and then jam, for about three and a half hours. I developed a bad case of tourettes, as every time it would jam would result in me screaming “GODDAMN YOU $*F#%!!”  I luckily work in a pretty relaxed environment, where my boss just found these interludes humorous and came over and fake-mean-dogged the machine himself, for good measure. I’m pretty sure the scanner was just F-ing with us on purpose at this point. I mean, to jam, every single time, when I am hand-feeding it pages? No. That is not an accident. That is diabolical.

After about three and half hours, and several popped blood vessels later, I was like, “I’m done. I can’t do this. I’m going to Kinkos.” And I grabbed the file and a flash drive and headed over. FedEx Office/Kinkos is in the business of printing and scanning. Surely someone there could help me, I rationalized.

I breezed in and was immediately greeted by the staff. This is the ensuing conversation:

Guy: “Hi. What can we do for you today?”

Me: “Hi! I need this scanned onto this flashdrive.” (handing him the 70 page document)

Guy: “Ok, when do you need this?”

Me: “Uh, now?”

Guy: (laughs in my face). “Now? Hey Marko, did you hear that? She wants it now.”

Um, excuse me?? FedEx Office is in the business of making fast copies and prints. Why is it ridiculous that I would ask for something done right then? It’s scanning, for God’s sake. In theory, it should take like five minutes, tops.

I must have given him this look, like I was horribly confused about why this was an issue, and then someone else came over and said they could do it right then. Ok, great. Awesome. The customer service I expected. And then the guy tells me that it costs $1/page for scanning. This was my exact reaction:

Me: “A dollar a page. Are you %&#%-ing kidding me??”

Because yes, that is what I think. How on earth is SCANNING cost a dollar a page?? They literally put it in a tray and the machine does it. It’s not like it’s hand-copied in calligraphy or something, or require a person to do anything other than stare at a machine.

I understand how capitalism works. FedEx Office had something I wanted: scanning ability. And I was scanner-less. But I have way more respect for things that require skill, or labor, or creative talent. To me, that is worth the money.  I was expecting scanning to be the same price as copying: about ten cents a page. It’s the same process, albeit the machine is different. But in this day and age, a scanner costs the same as a copier. Why on earth does FedEx charge ten times as much??

I snatched back my document and returned in a huff to the office. The nerve of that guy! I told my boss that the guy laughed in my face, and my boss cracked up. The whole thing was ridiculous.

I ended up faxing the document (on the same fickle machine). It refused to send the last three pages. It probably wouldn’t have worked out any other way.