This is not so much a rant as an observation of stupidity .... okay, maybe it's a tiny bit of a rant.

I work in retail (Have forever) I currently work at Office Depot in the print center. We're not a massive professional print center. We're limited on what we can do. People don't seem to understand that. And, let's face it, there are things that are impossible no matter what.

For example, don't hand us a piece of paper that is black and white and ask if it can be copied in color. There's no color, cupcake, the answer is no. I'd be super happy to make the copy on the color machine and charge you for a color copy, but it's still gonna be black and white. 

I'm flummoxed as to why people wait until the night before a meeting that's happening first thing in the morning to come in and try and have things printed. We aren't miracle workers, you can't have 1400 copies and 40 coil binds right this second. Ain't happening. It takes time, and there are orders we already have that were obviously put in before yours that we need to complete. You ain't special. 

We can't burn a CD/DVD and make a professionally edited slide show. We simply don't have the programs to accomplish that. We're a print center, not a photo studio or video editing place. I honestly don't care if you've been told "it's only one more step from burning a CD to making a slide show" it still requires a program that we don't have. 

Regardless of what you want to believe, we don't save everyone's files. We have very limited file space.  That file you sent us a year and a half ago is gone, you should have made certain you saved it.

We have what's called a Store Purchasing Card (or SPC card for short), this is offered for companies that do a high volume of printing to help reduce their printing costs. It cuts their costs by a great deal (black and white copies are normally .15 a page, with the card it's roughly .05 a page) So, no you can't have more of a discount. You already have a major one. If it's too expensive for you don't print it. 

If we explain we can't do something, we can't do it, don't tell us you had it done at another location. We don't all have the same equipment, as nice as that would be. Some stores can do things others can't. Our store has two different large format printers, this allows us to do a wider range of large format print jobs, most stores only have one large format. Some stores have newer computers, some have newer printers, that's just how it is. We aren't telling you because we don't want to do it, we're telling you because we can't do it. We have daily sales goals we have to reach, we don't turn people away unless we physically can't do the job.

They've recently added a queue system to our stores. It's basically like what the DMV has had for years, there are a lot of places who do the whole sign in thing. Cox cable does it if you go to one of their retail locations. So does Quest diagnostic. It's not a new concept. Yet, people bitch loudly when we point out the computer kiosk and ask them to please sign in. I get it when we aren't busy and they are literally the only one standing there, that I agree is stupid af. But we have a quota, we need at least 100 people logged in every day.  When we're super busy, it's an awesome tool for keeping things straight and not having a crowd standing before the counter. People can sign in and go shop, they get a text when they reach the front of the line. We have no control over the thing, this was something corporate decided on doing, you don't like it, complain to them.

The store's hours are on the door, please don't come in two minutes before closing with a plan to do an hour's worth of shopping. We don't run out the door at nine when the store closes. We have a whole list of things we have to do after close to get ready for the next day. It's hard to do those things when there's a customer wandering the store. Registers can't be counted, aisles can't be straightened, floor swept and mopped. Get it? Good. 

In short, I'm sorry to say it but customers are not always right. In fact, they're wrong a large amount of the time. 

Hug a retail worker, we need it, it's quite possible we're one cranky customer away from losing our minds.