Friday, March 30, 2007

Makin' copies. Not.

The Ex in FedEx/Kinko's is supposed to stand for Express. It doesn't. At least, not at the Monroeville store. I went there tonight to make get some copies made. I waited, second in line for over 5 minutes. There was one person who looked like she was making copies. Another had her back to the customers working intently on what I assumed was some sort of desktop publishing project and a third guy doing. . . something. I don't know what but it wasn't making copies and it wasn't waiting on customers.

Geis: "Ten pages. Ten copies. Collated and stapled. One page. Seven copies on my own label paper."

Kinkoid: "They should be ready in 30 minutes."

Geis: "Half an hour?!?! . . . I'll be back."

Fourty minutes later I returned and my originals were still sitting there uncopied. Recognizing that I had returned at the appointed time and my copies hadn't been done, the Kinkoid made my copies. It took her 90 seconds to do them wrong. She had to do them again.

It then took me 15 minutes to trim my label sheets. When I left the store, there was one person making copies. The other employees were nowhere to be seen and the same half dozen customers that were waiting for copies when I got mine were apparently still waiting.

I worked at Kinko's for five years in the Oakland store. The Monroeville store is easily three times the size of the Oakland store but with a third of the staff. When I was the delivery driver, I got to see all the stores and even way back then (15-odd years ago, now) Monroeville was woefully understaffed. Or, at least, under-performing. You can't blame staffing levels. I distinctly recall working one Sunday when I was the only person in the Oakland store. I had customers waiting. I had three machines running. I was taking care of everyone. Nobody was griping.

One might think that in 15 years, Monroeville might have caught onto that "customer service thing" but it never has.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can thank the Fedex part for that. They have trampled co-worker morale into the ground and none of us care any more.

Jo Custer said...

the one in Oakland is somewhat quicker, but then you have to deal with some very angsty personalities

i went there to return ship an item that had come in faulty and, never having shipped anything from fedex before, walked right past the appropriate desk and to the front.

the woman looked at me like i was daft or stupid and told me that i'd have to go to shipping, to which i mumbled something about not having seen the sign, that it wasn't exactly what drew the eye when walking in.

she proceeded to get very officious, shouting out orders about how to wrap it, saying that "they weren't that inept" when i started to wrap it myself, and then announcing that they would have to get a bigger sign because people like me couldn't see it.

i felt sorry for her, but also felt like she should get a job she'd enjoy more.