The Kinko's Experience

Is everyone familiar with Kinko's Copies? (It's a 24 hour printing shop that has the resources to do anything from making fake IDs to publishing a book)

I never liked the place much, but I've always had to go there for one reason or another. This time it was because I needed a laser jet printer. So here goes...

On Wednesday night I finished making a CD layout for my friends' band, Enforsaken. All I had to do was put it on a disk and bring it to Kinko's to make the final print.

After searching around I discovered that I only had one floppy disk, and it already had a layout on it for another band I was helping. The only place I could think of that might sell disks at 11pm was Kinko's. So that's where I went.

I drove there and looked around but couldn't find any disks anywhere. I asked the cashier if they still sold floppies and he looked at me like I was crazy, but it ended up that they had just one lying around.

I got back home and copied the file to the disk, then drove back. When I tried to open the file at Kinko's, I learned that my disk was corupt. So I went home again.

I took the other disk and emptied it onto my computer and put the Enforsaken layout on. I drove back to Kinko's again.

After I got there I realized that I left my Kinko's card at home. I only had $3 in my pocket, so I decided to put $2 on a new card. I bought the card and went to a computer.

It costs $.40 per minute to use the computer, and each print is $.45 (plus tax), so $2 seemed like more than enough. Afterall I only needed to open the image and print it.

Once my image finally loaded on the screen I only had $1.20 left. (Yep, took 2 minutes just to load a damn jpeg off a disk) I chose to print 2 copies since I had enough. I watched my total drop to $.80 as the damn thing loaded and displayed a message saying I didn't have enough money.

I went and found a clerk and told him that the computer charged me $1.20 to sit and wait while an image loaded and I didn't have enough left on the card to print. I asked if I could get $.18 in credit to finish the print job. He didn't like the idea. He told me that it wasn't his problem and that I'd just have to put more money on the card. I argued with him for a few minutes about this but eventually gave in. I put my last dollar in the machine and went back to the computer.

When I got there, I discovered that even though it was in "suspend" mode, the last $.80 that I had on my card had been depleted while I was arguing. I still had enough to make the prints, but I was so pissed off that I just took everything and went up front to complain. I finally got my way and they printed it for me, but I never got the money back that I felt I deserved.

And I did deserve it, and here's why:

If I had put my image on a Zip disk or a CD, it would have loaded much quicker and I could have been in and out with no trouble, but I'm stuck with the primitve disk format. Kinko's analy rapes anyone who uses disks. I had to spend $1.20 just to wait for an image to load, but I could have opened it from a CD in a matter of seconds.

Plus I wasn't treated like a customer, I was made to feel like I was a nuisance. I hate Kinko's...

The moral of the story: stop using the outdated unreliable pieces of crap that are 3.5" floppy disks.

I would if I could afford to.

EXCEPT of course to keep your windows98 start up disk on, you need that :)

Floppies are useful for storing documents.

I've been unemployed for a few months but I begin a job at UPS in a couple weeks, so eventually I'll be able to start using CDs.

Does anyone have any thoughts regarding Kinko's or my story? I'm wondering if they treat their customers poorly at every store. I'm gonna write the company a letter about my experience.

Uh, yeah, they suck. I wouldn't use 'em. But then I wouldn't need to, so

Diskettes are being phased out soon enough. =)

That band is quite good. I don't know why they'd want to lump themselves in with the Death Metal genre 100% of which pretty much sucks. The vocalist sounds like he could actually sing if he wanted to.

I use 3.5 floppies to carry stuff back and forth between school, and they work fine for that kind of thing.

I only know the KING DOOM EXPERIENCE :)

That band is quite good. I don't know why they'd want to lump themselves in with the Death Metal genre 100% of which pretty much sucks. The vocalist sounds like he could actually sing if he wanted to.

I can't say I agree wholly on your opinion of the Death Metal genre, but Enforsaken does kick massive amounts of ass.

The singer, Steve Sagala, is a music major and is very talented. He does "clean" singing on The Acting Parts and Embraced By Misery. I love how he arranges his harsh vocals though. One of the reasons so many extreme metal bands sound generic is because their singers neglect the importance of multi-tracking.

Enforsaken has The Acting Parts up on mp3.com. It's different than the new material they've been writing. The demo that I did the layout for has 3 new songs that are much heavier and rhythmically complex, and they do a cover of the Death song, Crystal Mountain, off of the album Symbolic. They also do a cover of Carcass's Incarnated Solvent Abuse. Once you hear their version you'll never go back.