A VOTE FOR MITT IS A VOTE FOR PENCILS

A recent television advertisement for Mitt Romney touted that he helped start Pencils. I'm assuming that statement refers to the tax breaks and other incentives he offered the company to locate in Massachusetts when he was Governor. Of course all the corporate bigwigs made out like bandits, while the employees of Pencils are paid minimum wage and are rarely eligible for health or other benefits. Go ahead Mitt, take credit for another half-assed corporation that exploits their workers. You have my vote.

PENCILS: IDIOCY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

Let me start this story like most of my work related stories: I had faith in humanity before I started working at Pencils. With that said, most Associates think the EasyWrecks get the dumbest of customers. I'm here to tell you that Office Supplies/Furniture is no picnic either. I've completely lost count of the times someone has asked me if we have something that we haven't carried in 20 years only to get this response: "You HAVE to carry it. This is Pencils!". Oh really Jackass?! We HAVE to carry it just because of your first grade logic that this is in fact Pencils and based on your assertion that we carry it, you expect me to wave a magic wand and make it appear right before your eyes? Fuck you.

Because the Pencils store I work in is small compared to the other stores in the area, we only stock about 3/4 of what the other stores carry. Which basically means none of the crappy impulse promo items that come in at random times of the year, that for some reason or another, people still seem to ask me if we carry it. This also means we don't stock File Cabinets in the store, yet we have displays of them. I love explaining this phenomenon to people. People always try to fight me to sell them a display model just because they "need it today". OK so you want me to sell you a display file cabinet that we've had in the store since the Mesozoic era and is probably going to fall apart the moment you put anything in it. Oh and you need help fitting it into your Prius after buying $600 worth of shit at Costco? You'd rather me not do the smart thing and order you a brand new one and have it shipped to you for free, just because you "need it today"? Again, fuck you.

With the ranting and raving aside, I have to share this one with you while we're on the subject of file cabinets.

The other night I had some dumbass call the furniture section. This is the conversation verbatim (or as close as I remember it)
Me: Furniture this is______. How can I help you?
Customer: Hi ______. This is _________. I got transferred to you because I'm looking for a replacement key for a file cabinet. I tried going to a locksmith and he couldn't help me. Do you sell those?
Me: Not in the store unfortunately. The closest thing we might have is a replacement lock that comes with a couple sets of keys but we only sell those online. Otherwise, you would need to contact the manufacturer for a replacement key.
Customer: [few moments of silence] Well who's the manufacturer?
Me: The company who made the file cabinet, there should be a logo or company name on the front of it.
Customer: You don't know who the manufacturer is?
Me: It could be anybody. There's several different companies out there.
Customer: But you don't have that information?
Me: No.
*click*

I don't think I need to comment on that. The idiocy speaks for itself.

Finding Love In All The Wrong Places: Pencils

So I wonder how many of you have had relationships start with co-workers when you work at Pencils? Well, in my store up here in the Northeast, we seem to have new relationships start and stop every few months between co-workers, and the theme is that it ALWAYS ends badly. The last go round we had was between an EasyWreck and copy center associate, who just both happened to be females… now everybody calm down. After a shitload of time, it seems that the new cashier we hired, who was a guy and the EasyWreck girl, starting getting all cute with each other. In turn that pissed off the copy center girl, and started causing a flurry of drama in the store. That terminated the girls' relationship and made me a firm believer of “Don’t shit where you eat”. Oh, and as of the other day, Easywreck girl and new cashier dude are dating. I can see this ending well, can’t you all? Life goes on at Pencils, we should have prime time on ABC for “All My Associates” since they killed all the soap operas…..

YEAH, WE DON'T GOT THAT

I've never been a people person. I've never had great faith in humanity. What I did have, working in retail utterly destroyed. Pencils actually does carry a reasonable selection of merchandise (not that it's in stock-- but technically we carry it). Being a cashier, people often stop on their way in to ask me if we carry a particular item. Usually it's stuff like register tape (back half of aisle two) or stationary (aisle one on the left). But every now and then I get very special customers who inquire about items such as aquariums (the same neck-tattooed customer followed up asking if we sold XBox games-- if only there was a store that sold both aquarium supplies and console games), facial hair trimmers, and lawnmowers  (at a store two doors down from a Sears). There are also those customers whose sole purchases are things like Smooth Away, Snuggies (ugh), sunglasses (really? we're who you thought of?) or our over-priced candy.

Then there are the customers who were obviously never hooked on phonics. It's usually the older crowd who asks for ink "cart-lidges," but dipshits of all ages ask for "cayenne" and "mag-netta"  color cartridges. Once, while I was ringing up a couple, the wife picked up one of those retractable pens that shows a different message on the barrel every time you click it. She clicked it a couple of times, glanced thoughtfully at the tag and murmured, "hm... rotating massage pen..." I just stared at her for a moment as I quietly wept inside. I didn't bother correcting her. Another time I was ringing up a large piece of foam board and I was having trouble maneuvering the bar code beneath the scanner. Noticing my difficulty, the customer commented, "Don't kill yourself." Finally getting it, I replied, "It's just a bit cumbersome." "Cumbersome?" he repeated. "That's a good word... cumbersome." For the rest of the transaction he repeated the word quietly to himself as if it was a riddle he was trying to figure out.

They can't remember their own phone numbers yet I'm the one making $7.68 an hour.

Mutiny On The Pencils

I am a current employee at a high-traffic Pencils in a business area, so you can imagine that our CopyCenter is like waiting in line at the DMV.  Anyway, I've been itching to can this job months after I started,  and now 10 months into the fucker, I'm fed up. Today seemed to be a rather off day at my Pencils. Everyone seemed to be fed up and overwhelmed, and a conversation arose to all "resign" the same day. I don't know about you, but I think 2 cashiers of 2, 2 of 3 EasyTechs and 3 of 4 CopyCenter Associates leaving the same day would be pretty fucking awesome! Pencils Sucks, Pencil's is cheap and more so, MANAGEMENT BITES THE BIG ONE!! This store is bound be shut down after this plot takes place.

ANOTHER STUPID CUSTOMER STORY

I worked at Pencils for three years as an Easy Resident Tech.  I left recently because I finally found a job in IT with better pay and less stress.  I’ve got to share my best “stupid customer” story:

A middle-aged woman walked up to me holding a power strip with USB ports and a Belkin Easy-transfer cable (for those who aren’t familiar, it’s a cable with a male USB type A plug on each end that is geared toward helping less tech-savvy people transfer files between computers).  She asked me if she could use the combination of the two to charge her laptop. I replied that it wouldn’t work and explained that while the USB ports do provide a bit of power that can be used to charge devices when the laptop is turned on, you can’t backfeed power through them to charge the laptop.  (I didn’t even bother mentioning that the cable in question probably wouldn’t work to run power through anyway)  I asked her if something had happened to her power adapter, and said that if she brought in the laptop or had a model number for it, I could order the one for it.  If it was something she needed right away we had a few universal adapters that were more expensive but would work. She said that she brought the laptop with her on a recent trip and ended up leaving the adapter behind.  A friend gave her another adapter, but she said the plug was a little too large on it.  Her solution was to file out the port on the laptop to accommodate the larger plug.  Obviously it didn’t work out.  The worst part:  the laptop in question was a fairly nice Toshiba that she purchased less than a month ago.  Talk about throwing money out the window!  This customer was the inspiration for many jokes for a long time!