WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, KINKOS????
Congratulations, Kinkos, you are the worst most terrible business ever.
I mean, Jesus Christ you are consistently, unrelentingly awful! YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING RIGHT! Do you BUY your photocopiers broken? Is that the way you LIKE them?
Are your computers full of rat babies and old ketchup packets? Because that would explain why checking my email on them takes so GODDAMN LONG.
Where do you find your employees, Kinkos? I have never seen such a wealth of indifferent stupidity. They can’t just be retarded, because then they would take some pride in their work. Retarded people are joyous when they display their GodsEyes or Happy Meal, your employees don’t give a shit how bad their work is. You drug them, right?
Do they have to be TAUGHT how to be so rude, or do you just have a knack for finding the right people? Or do you just tell them that people who shop at Kinkos are racists and shit-fetishists?
Also, fuck you.
January 21st, 2006 at 2:10 am
Eliza does not like Kinko’s!
January 21st, 2006 at 2:15 am
I feel your pain, but not as much as I used to.
I think copy places in general are having tough times. I think it’s because of rise of desktop publishing and home laser printers.
When I was looking my first job in the late 90s, laser printers were around $800 to $1000 bucks for a bargain basement model. All I had was a leaky inkjet printer. I wanted to print my resume out on nice paper, so I had to go to the local copy place to do it.
There was always a line on the one or two computers hooked to the laser printer. People were there making copies or having special binders printed up for office work. It was a hub of activity for people’s needs.
Now laser printers are $200 bucks, people have access to scanners and PDFs more than ever, and many offices have cheap color printers for in house stuff. The newer printers fax, scan, print color, etc. There’s less reason to send out for printing services and less of a reason to go to to a copy store.
If I have to send out a large document, I just email or FTP a PDF. It saves trees too.
As demand slackens, so does the quality of service.
As for the surly employees…that’s everywhere these days.
BTW…I read you Lili Taylor post. That’s how I found your blog. I like her too!
January 21st, 2006 at 11:35 pm
In case you want to experience your pain from the other side of the counter, check out Disaffected.
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:18 am
Wow! Is it really THAT bad?
January 31st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Dear Ms. Skinner,
We here at Kinkos appreciate you taking the time to give us feedback and share your comments and concerns regarding the service you received. Customer service is our number one priority here at Kinkos.
While we understand that many of our customers really do prefer a number two priority, as our research indicate that they are indeed shit fetishists, we hold true to our founding vision of customer service first, shit second.
While we do have an equal opportunity hiring policy, most of our employees do not qualify as mentally challenged, although many are well below the average level of intelligence. We pride ourselves in giving employment opportunities to the otherwise unemployable assholes of the world; this is just another way in which kinkos strives to give back to the community while thoroughly pissing off the racist shit fetishists who frequent our establishments.
Yes, we do enjoy buying broken copiers; it lowers the overhead.
No, our computers do not have any old ketchup packets in them. We prefer not to comment on the presence or non-presence of rodents involved in any machine at or owned by kinkos, as advised by our corporate counsel.
We hope we have adequately adressed your concerns and that you will remain a loyal racist shit fetishist customer for life.
Sincerely,
Kinkos
January 31st, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Hilarious.
February 23rd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Let me tell you a little something about fear. I once ripped my pants in a fancy restaraunt and had to make it to the front door hoping and praying that no one would notice that my Johnny Jacobson was in plain view, if you get me. Now THAT’s fear. Also, I have a fear of suspenders.
Eliza Skinner changed her name from “Darla P. Hammerhymen” seven years ago.
April 19th, 2006 at 2:57 am
I WORK at a FedUp Kinkyos in Tulsa. I must tell you, in all fairness, we do not actually BUY our copiers. They are leased on service agreements. Not only that, but some are obtained from companies we are in compitition with. I work with some very knowlegeable people and we really do try hard to get our customers’ orders correct and often try to do a little extra when we create a document, if it is appropriate.
As for the compter rental. HELLOOOOO. It is a computer rental station. Of course it is going to be slow, anyone wanting to make money off of it would not use top of the line equipment. Some of the speed issue isn’t the computer its self. Some of it is the start up time from all the crap that the stations are hooked up to, including the card readers. Plus, you were likely using one of the Dells. I’m guessing a low-end Pentium 4 (1.2 GHz, maybe) Win 2K OS, and likely the ram operated at 100 0r 133 MhZ (AKA chump speed). But again in fairness to my employer, I challenge anyone to find a set up that is SIMILAR to Kinkos and see if our systems are REALLY that much slower. If you want a real bargain on computer time at kinkos, use the LapNet. It is only 10 cents/min, and it is only as slow as YOUR laptop. Otherwise, quityurbychen and go to Quik Print!
August 13th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Ph yeah, tell me about LapNet. Yeah I was just at Kinko’s yesterday and used their LapNet- guess what? LapNet installs itself like a virus. Now it shows up every time I boot and there is NO UNINSTALL. I called tech support (905 882 2500 x4- that’s for Entrec, the creators of that beast) and they said “You need to come in and use our hardware to remove lapnet from your system.”
Isn’t that illegal? I’m guessing buried in the 20 pages of text that “I Accept”ed it says “You grant Entrec/Fedex/Kinkos permission to permanently mess up your computer.” There’s gotta be a lawsuit before too long…
November 13th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Anyone else have info on the lapnet removal issue? I’ve used it for a few years, and only recently has this issue of it launching every time I boot up appeared. There must be more to it than just going back to Kinko’s and uninstalling, the creators could not have intended it to function in this manner. With regards to all the complaints about computer use in general. People have to wake up and realize that it is Microsoft that creates all these problems. Their OS’s are nothing more than versions of the original windows, with more bells and whistles attached. Dear Bill, when are the fundamentals of how this OS functions going to change, my guess is never, you have taken this product as far as it can go. The cost to society, and businesses, from all these windows issues is immeasurable.
Enjoy the view up there in Redmond, Bill, while you make us all run around in circles with this stupidity. Even better, who out there, has the courage to come up with something better, and, to make everyone realize how we’ve all been duped into thinking that this is the way things have to be with regards to computer systems. Unix, developed many years ago, does not require reboots to fix problems. In the end, until the consumer wakes up and realizes these facts, we will not get a better product. Do your part, spread the word, complain, but do it in an effective manner, do it in such a way that your voice will be heard.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Found how to solve the lapnet wizard starting every time you boot up. Just go to documents and settings/start menu/startup
and delete lapnet……………..
or, just do a search for “lapnet” in the start menus, when you find it in a “startup” folder, delete it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Thanks for info this - I really can’t believe they think it’s okay to taint your computer like this. Extremely frustrating.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Thanks..that worked….it was pretty annoying..
Yeah, What’s up with that..slow computers and a premium price for crappy stuff..remember when wifi was free there now they charge….just go to your local coffee shop if you have a laptop and cut out the greedy middleman Kinkos…1.00 per print..15 feet away it is only 9 cents per print.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I am a reasonably techy and can not believe that Kinko’s does this. They should go out of business or face a class action suit. Basically, when you use Kinkos, a program called Lapnet is installed. It disables your wireless network and your printer settings and enables it own. If everything works smoothely and you completely follow the directions, it reverses the process when you log out. The problem occurs when you log out incorrectly or you shut down or encounter an error message, lose battery power, etc. Then it leaves your settings disabled and the software running.
I went to a large Fedex Kinkos and no one was helpful (in more than the technical sense) but they did give me the employees tech hotline (1-800-546-5674) which I called. They though I was an employee and kept saying “make the customer do this so they won’t blame you.” Anyway, I could gone on but here’s my info….
I went to c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\startup and deleted a file called LapLink.exe which at least the process keeps the process from starting. But upon rebooting, it still didn’t let me get wireless, so next step for a PC.
Right click on MY COMPUTER icon, select MANAGE, Choose DEVICE MANAGER, Click the + next to NETWORK ADAPTERS if it is there so that it will show you the list of network adapters. Your wireless card should be shown with a red X to its left (may be hard to tell it is an X). Right click on that item and choose enable. Your wireless should now work. You may need to right click on the wireless icon on the task bar and refresh the list, but that is the easy part.
My reco - NEVER use your PC at a Kinkos.