Kinko's Sucks
<ACT ONE>
Me - I want high-quality laser prints on glossy stock. Can you do that here?
Kinko's Guy - Sure. The best. We can output super high- quality stuff on our color laser printers. Photo-quality stuff on photo-quality paper.
Me – Great. That’s what I want.
Kinko’s Guy – Sure. No problem. Its $10 per print for us to handle your file, but it’s a lot cheaper if you do it yourself on one of our PCs.
Me – OK. Cool. Can I bleed 8-1/2 x 11?
Kinko’s Guy –No. Sorry. We can do 8-1/2” x 11”, but there will be a quarter inch white border which cuts into the image. We call that “cropping.”
Me – But you advertise that you can do all this big stuff; banners and whatnot.
Kinko’s Guy – Look, any image area over 8” x10-1/2” and we have to send it out to something called an “offset printer.”
Me – OK. Whatever. I’ll be back with a disk later.
<ACT TWO> (later)
Me – I resized my documents and burned them to a CD. Which computer do I use?
Kinko’s Guy – Any computer. What size do you want to print? 8-1/2 x 11” or 11”x17”?
Me – (incredulous) Wha??? You can print 11”x17”, but not a full 8-1/2 X 11. What’s the deal? Why not just put the 8-1/2x11 image on a 11x17 piece of paper.
Kinko’s Guy - (condescending) Sir. If I did that, your image would have to be sideways.
(long pause)
Me – Ah, yaaaah... I hadn’t thought of that. Moving right along; is the glossy photo paper in the printer already?
Kinko’s Guy – On, no. We don’t let customers print on glossy photo paper. Only Kinko’s Employees are allowed to do that. That will be $10.
Me – (getting pissed) Look, I’m not paying you ten bucks to hit “print.” You just told me I can do this, so let’s get this show on the road.
Kinko’s Guy – (speaking as if to a simple child) I understand your conundrum. Why don’t you just print on a regular piece of bond paper, then make a glossy color copy? See? Problem solved.
Me – (pissed) If I did that, I’d have a nice color copy of a piece-of-crap image. Is the color copier going to magically improve the image so it looks like it was never printed on bond paper in the first place? I want to output a high-quality original on glossy stock.
Kinko’s Guy – Hmm. I guess we can’t help you
Me – Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggh!