My latest experience with Kinko’s went as follows:
I enter the store, I am the only customer there and there are two employees behind the counter staring closely at their computer screens. One is a manager exchanging instant messages with someone. The other is the subordinate. I see them each glance at me while I arrive at the counter and wait to be acknowledged. They both go back to doing whatever they’re doing.
I’m standing there about 10 more seconds and the subordinate finally gets up and lets out an exhausted sigh. At this point I go deep inside my mind searching for the answer to the question “why do I keep coming back here?” And I’m reminded that the answer is obvious, “because I don’t own a decent printer”.
So when the subordinate meets me at the desk, he doesn’t begin the conversation. I’ve dealt with him before so I didn’t expect anything more. He’s a tall, goofy, slow young man. So I take the initiative because I don’t wanna stand there all day.
I place my CD on the counter and tell him very clearly, “I have 6 full color TIFF files on this disc and I’d like to have them each printed on standard stock 8.5 x 11in paper.” Boom, I told him all he needs to know. He should have absolutely no questions. He takes the CD from me and pops it in his computer. He proceeds to stare at his screen for a very long time.
Now usually with Kinko’s, I drop my stuff off and get a phonecall to come and pick it up. First they check out your stuff before they tell you what they’re going to do, and so I figured that’s what he was doing here. I had to figure this because he doesn’t communicate the information I’d like to know. So I stick around and after about 3 minutes of him staring at my files he says, “you have 6 files on here.”
I reply, “Yeah, I know.”
“You want me to print them all?”
“Yes.”
But by “yes” i actually mean “YES YOU FREAKING RETARD! THAT’S WHAT I TOLD YOU WHEN I FIRST CAME IN HERE!”
I hate Kinko’s.
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next time go to mimeo.com they are so much better and you can do it all from your computer, now if you want it back the next day the shipping is a little pricey. Just plan ahead and it will be way cheaper to ship and will actually compare to stinkos oops I meant Kinkos, and with SOOOOOOO much less hassle and errors.
joy martin on July 22nd, 2007 at 10:12 pm | Link
what I need from Kinko’s is the same day or next day product. And it’s local as hell. There’s one within 10 minutes of my house and if I’m in the city, New York has so many of them. Also, if I don’t like the product, I give it back to them, they redo it or whatever and I only pay for the one that I take out of the store.
You should still check them out. They are pretty cool and seriously such a better option! They even offer a free trial so you can check it out the first time for free. Do you think Kinko’s would ever do that?!? My son’t friend worked at Kinko’s for a couple weeks last summer, they made $8.50 an hour! No wonders they stink so bad, they don’t invest in the employees! I do all i can NOT to have to go there.
joy martin on July 23rd, 2007 at 6:35 am | Link
Yeah, I worked at Kinkos for 2 years.
Longest two years of my life.
You hate kinkos?
Trust me, the guy behind the counter hated you more.
(Mostly cause he made 8.50 an hour to be the whipping boy for poor designers)
Former Kinkoid on July 23rd, 2007 at 9:46 pm | Link
Kinkoid, your point rings true. I shouldn’t have expected him to be enthusiastic about his job. But the thing is, if you don’t like where you’re at, you need to start moving forward. Myself, for instance, I hate my current job and I’m making moves (tiny moves, but moves nonetheless) to progress forward and be happier with myself. I’ve worked at Circuit City, and now I work at the front desk of a hotel, I feel for people who are stuck in dead-end jobs because they are paid simply to be where they are for 8 hours, rather than being paid to do something that they’re good at and love. But I have no empathy for someone who is going to simply accept a dead-end as their path. So if I appear to be ridiculing this person, it’s because I can’t respect someone who won’t respect himself.
On the other hand, he asked me a question that I had already answered for him when I first spoke. So it was absolutely ridiculous to hear him ask me that.
I’m not sure if you’re defending that guy or not. I just thought I’d cover all my bases in case you were. If you can offer more insight about Kinko’s, I would greatly appreciate it. You must’ve met a hundred wannabe-designers like myself in the two year sentence you spent at Kinko’s.
I must say, I’m an assistant manager for a very productive FedEx Kinko’s, and I hate it as well. But not because of the hundreds of wanna be designers. Oh no… It’s the fact that we get payed a fraction of what our customers make, and our job is to save them from getting fired by doing the stuff they should’ve done instead of being lazy and waiting till the last minute. But that’s one of the many reasons this company continues to grow.
Lazy may not be the case for all customers. Plenty of jobs are paying less and less but expecting more and more. Some of our customers are just very overworked and would rather spend some time with their family on the weekend instead of preparing his/her
booklets for their presentation on Monday @ 9am.
The two employees working in this store were wrong for not getting with you or at least greeting you when you approached the counter. A simple “Be with you shortly, Sir.” would be enough. Because let’s face it. FedEx Kinko’s is way more than just a copy shop today. The two employees could have had a just gotten a verbal thrashing from a customer that was on the way to pick up some copies that they urgently needed. To which the customer didn’t set up a proper bleed or needed a million changes to the file be fore it could be printed. Just to name a few… But like I said, all they had to do was acknowledge the fact that you were there.
I don’t defend him but I wish people would take a minute to just look at it from our point of view. Everyday I am happy to wake and have a job to go to, yet and still, it’s kinda hard to smile when you get treated like trash.
Jimmy Dean on March 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm | Link
I just resigned from Fedexkinko’s. Currently, I am enrolling in college full time. I agree with what Jimmy Dean says, but I don’t really blame the customers for the work environment at Kinko’s. Lets face it, most Kinko’s stores are way understaffed for the level of customer intervention which is required to serve the customers. Basically, each employee could spend a minimum of 10 minutes for each customer that enters the store. The stores are not adequately staffed to handle the volume of customers of a major hub. And look at the employee turnover rate? From most of the customer complaints that I have read, I have to wonder how long that employee has been at Kinko’s? I bet a lot of the confused employees are guys and gals who have been at the store less than six months and haven’t been adequately trained on pre-flight, otp, or on the copy business in general.
After reviewing my 2.5 years at Kinko’s, I see lack of proper training and poor scheduling for employees as the two major issues that causes poor employee moral. I am sure that all stores are different, but I worked at three separate stores and found the same complaints in each store.
Hardcopy on August 7th, 2008 at 8:53 pm | Link
I m on my 6 month at fedex kinkos and still not sure how to to alot of things but I do my best. I believe that people should be more appreciative for what others are doing for them. Cause i sure everyone at one time or another has no clue what they are doing. Not to make excusses just realize you as a customer are not the only person that needs help. And for the record we are suppose to repeat what you want us to do so that it is done correctly so repeating info is policy.
FedEX on August 17th, 2008 at 7:52 pm | Link
I started at Kinko’s on 2004 and I am still there right now, though I was lucky enough to have my own department which does solely signs and banners, but I feel the pain that customers have to put up with and the Kinko’s employee has to deal with every single day.
To people who are customers, we are trying our best to help you all out, but this is Kinko’s not McDonald. It’s not as easy as ordering supersized number one or a happy meal with extra fries. 80% of our jobs are custom jobs and the company do not train us on that sort of things. We are on our own. They just provide us the tools to help our customers. So please be patient and help us help you! Also please consider this that we are not just a printing shop, we does packing, shipping both local and international, FedEx package trackings, we handles faxes, signs and displays, office supplies, computer consulting, graphic designing, email service, customer/phone consulting, and alot more but the company pays us very little to do all that. It seems like a dead-end job but we work there because it’s stable and still pays higher than other retail stores.
Customers probably wonder why don’t we hire more employees? Back in the day when an employee gives two weeks notice, the company would hire a new replacement person during that the two week, but that’s not how it works at Kinkos. It could take a month or two before we can hire an employee. We have to go through background check, drug test, personality test, and finally training which would take almost a month to complete. So our job is not simple as standing all day and press the green button at the copy manchine.
If you think our job is easy, think again. We have to always be on our feet and our minds have to be sharp and pay attention to every single copy. When there is something wrong with the customer files, we try our best to fix it, and I know almost always, we fixed them behind your back and we don’t even charge customers for it. So if you have a tiff file that is 1200dpi and all you wanted was 8.5×11 and our printer only prints 600dpi max. You are actually making our job alot harder. One, it takes about 10-15 mins to spool a 200+mb file to our print server. Two, it takes another 5-10 mins for the printer to process the file and finally print it. Three, big files on the CD takes very long time to open. Four, three files on the CD + spooling and printing time = hella long.
Please understand, I’m not bashing customers. I’m just showing you (customers) how things work. Things that customer don’t see before we can bring the your prints over to you.
Signs Guy on August 25th, 2008 at 7:39 pm | Link
I worked at kinko’s for 7 years, and the second fedex took over they went down hill. First thing they did was give everyone a major pay cut, and tell us that they had to because fed ex had to be reimbursed for buying Kinkos. Then moral went down, seasoned employees quit and were replaced by 8:00 an hour part time employees, known as greeters, that were- to be polite- englishly challenged. For some strange reason, even though the new employees were absolutly no replacement for the seasoned employees that left, the customers expected the same level of service. When they did not receive it, they treated the employees like garbage…
I would conservatively say that 10% of the people hired would not make it through their first week.
And then they would give the employees that were at the top of their pay level nickle and dime wage increases. Litterally.
To be a good kinko’s employee you have to know more then the customer knows about what ever program they are using.
Illustrator, photoshop, indesign, word, excel, powerpoint, visio, autocad, acrobat….Do you know all of these programs? Then you wouldn’t make a good employee,,,
They also need to understand basic networking, and machine maintenance. Everything is digital, and if a press and a computer aren’t communicating your job isn’t printed.
And the finishing, binding, drilling, cutting, mounting…
but you can’t find people that have that skill set and pay them a wage of 11.00 to 12.00 per hour.
So you get what you get.
usa5501 on September 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm | Link
There isn’t any training on Illustrator, photoshop, indesign, word, excel, powerpoint, visio, autocad, acrobat, so how is a new employee suppose to know more than a designer coming in to print off a poster for an interview? Those online courses have been deleted from the online training and replaced with Office Tiger.
Hardcopy on September 1st, 2008 at 4:44 pm | Link
I see a lot of customers coming in with there fancy iPhone but they don’t know how to do a fax or make copies. I find that very amusing.
ss on September 1st, 2008 at 8:08 pm | Link