Yep. I have a ton of Kinko’s stories. A lady once complained about the shipping time to a city in the same state, so I told here to drive it there herself. She wasn’t too happy about that one. Hahaha

I worked at Office Max, about four years ago I was planning on bringing my pet to the Vet that day. But after forgetting to do that, I brought my pet into work! It was about two hours later that my boss saw and told me to get it out. I really never even noticed. As soon as I entered the store I let my dog off the leash.

By funny stories do you mean encounters with the public? They can happen in any job.

My husband worked at a bookstore. Many times people would come in and say, “I am looking for a book. I can’t remember the title, and I forget the author. I think maybe the cover is red.”, and they would expect that the clerk could help them find the book!

When I worked for TV Guide magazine, at one point it was my job to respond to certain subscriber inquiries that involved my department, National Programming. I regularly got letters that said, “Why did you take Doogie Howser (or whatever the show was) off the air? I loved that show.” So, over and over again, I had to write that we were just a magazine that listed the programming the networks air. They are the ones who decide what shows will be on. You can write to ABC (or whatever network it was) at . . .

now that kinkos is owned by fed ex, do you get the same benefits and perks as you would as a fed ex employee? Just curious.

I stopped working there about three years ago. The benefits were not as good as fedex…. Niether was the pay.

I did. Long before the FedEx take over.

I once had a woman bring in her only copy of her master’s thesis (!) on a single floppy (!), and then proceed to lose half of it on a self serve computer. She blamed me and told my boss I was ogling a young woman across the store instead of doing my job.

I had a customer try to order copies of a KKK calling card.

It was the days before home scanners were ubiquitous. We used to get a couple people a month bringing in dirty pictures of themselves for us to scan, put on a floppy, so they could post online (AOL usually). Naked. Peeing. People were shameless!

Police came and dumped all the data from all our self serve computers after a coworker with a mental illness lied during questioning (for an unrelated crime) and claimed to have been running a credit card identity theft operation out of our store.

Almost asked a man to take his bare feet off a computer mouse, before noticing he had no hands, and was operating the computer with his feet/toes!

LOL. I forgot about naked pics. I remember calendar season always brought that out as well!

I think the best thing is that Dave Chapel’s Pop Copy skit was entirely true. I know at one point or another someone in my store pulled off something from that skit. Man, Kinko’s had the most difficult customers ever.

PopCopy was THE BEST EVER. I totally forgot about it.

I always said that Kinko’s is like McDonalds:. At McDonalds people want their 99 cent burger NOW, it’s the most important thing IN THE WORLD, but the employees are beneath consideration, even though they’re making THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD.

Kinko’s is the same, except people are even more wound up, because instead of 99 cents, it’s a sales presentation ON WHICH EVERYTHING IS RIDING. Same dynamic, more at stake.

Sheesh.

Met my wife and many friends of the last twenty-odd years at Kinko’s at Ohio State University’s campus. Lots of fun, first experiences with Macs and laser printers (1986) and many, many stories.

Velcroing a pumpkin to the wall. Toner bombs in the parking lot. The customer who wrote cannibal fan lit. Trust fund baby name-changer (Christopher Robin Hood at one point) writing endless letters to the Queen of England when we still had typewriters. Scientologists using the FAX machine for weekly stat updates, God help you if you glanced at the sheet while inserting into the machine. The broke guy who paid with string art. The guy who paid dozens of artists in Columbus to depict him with his former baby sitter underwater. Many drunken frat boys thinking copying their butts was an original stroke of inspiration.

Death of an era imo.

I always loved explaining copyright law to drunken lunatics.

“Transparencies” melting on the fuser roller…

..and working 3rd shift on the weekend and nobody showing for first shift to relieve you.

LOL been there.

Ah. The copyright explanation. Those were fun.

Here’s another good one: We did basic design and image editing in our Computer Services department. Woman came in one day, with a photo of her teenage daughter and Jennifer Love Hewitt. They had run into her at a park and asked for a picture. Only problem was, the daughter wasn’t wearing makeup and was otherwise non-glamorous next to Love Hewitt. So, the mom wanted me to photoshop a better picture of her daughter into the picture! wtf!?

what? We did that all the time…& then when they came to get it, even after repeatedly being told it would be three hrs @ $40/hr they would freak out. And the mgr would ALWAYS cave.

Oh yeah. TOTALLY that’s how it went. I think in that case it was just so ridiculous because the request made the actual event of meeting Love Hewitt meaningless. She could have paid for a photoshop job of the daughter and any star! Silly silly people!

Yep…10 years with some minor breaks before making the management plunge. I loved being a Kinkoid! My fellow “Kinks” were hyper quality, low waste machine weilding gods of the repro industry. And none more than my friends Dave (you know who you are), Kevin and Nelson who taught me everything I know. I miss those days….I miss those guys.