What: Unsolicited coupon. The offer? Spend $100, save $25.
Origin: It arrived in the mail, courtesy of a rewards program that I flippin' quit.
How long kept: About 6 weeks.
Why kept: I might want to save $25. Thus I Might Need It; It Might
Be Useful.
Destination: Shredder.
Confession: Having already quit the Staples faux-rewards program, I got sucked into a good 15-20 minutes of time-wasting contemplation about how I might "save" $25 at Staples.
No, it's not about saving the $25. It's about Staples getting $100 from me...and in so doing, adding enough crap to my basket at Staples that I don't currently need. Storing it, forgetting that I have it, or in the case of the inkjet ink they suggest you stock up on, perhaps having it dry out before I'm able to use it.
(And no, I can't use it to buy a gift card, where I could spend and "save" on my own schedule. (Besides, Stored Value Cards Are a Trap.) Nor is it transferable...otherwise I would have offered it up to one of our eight readers. This consideration was part of the time suck.)
Much like the so-called rewards program, this is a total mind "flip." I'm not playing.
Confession, part deux: I recently met a retired senior military leader and his wife. He's a lovely guy who leads a volunteer organization where I did some volunteering. He punctuates his public speech with various versions of the verb "to flip." It was flippin' hilarious. I mention his wife because I'm sure that she's the author of this word substitution.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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Staples is a second cousin once or twice removed from the anti-Christ.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree. Remember the old fashioned stationery stores and what they smelled like? There used to be a place called Bloombergs, on Exchange Place in the NYC Financial district. You could buy anything from a your standard rubber bands and paper clips, to a range of boilerplate legal agreements, to custom rubber stamps, to really expensive fountain pens...all from these ancient men standing behind waist-high glass cabinets. I think that they closed in the 90s. I miss them, and their ilk.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's retro to wish that we still paid people a living wage to work in a stationery store. The great neighborhood stationery stores made you feel invincible in the face of a filing issue, no matter the magnitude.
The chi in a Staples store is draining! The colors are exhausting. I can never wait to leave.
And now they have my name and will mail me stuff. Forever. I wish that I could have Willow and Tara come over and do a spell, chant, and daub herbal elixers around my doors and windows to disinvite them. (Buffy reference...)
But it is not to be. Staples is all over me like Spike on Buffy.
Sigh.
PS the ancient men were probably 40.
ReplyDeleteMy "local" store in the late 70s thru the 80s was the venerable Holland Stationery, on Canal St. Decrepit, with worn, sloping wooden floors, and wonderful, had everything, and I think their ancient men were closer to 50, but yes, we're on the same nostalgic page here. I love stationery supplies so much than when Staples first opened (as in one store, on 6th and 40th) I actually swooned! I just didn't know what it was ushering in, mowing down everyone it its wake. Holland, Bloombergs, and all the quintessentially unique small box stores.
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