09 December 2008

it happened at Fed Ex Kinkos

On my way to an interview this afternoon, I stopped into Fed Ex Kinko's in Chelsea, to make copies of my resume. The shop resembled a sort of corporate war zone: scraps of paper littered the floor, confusion, subdued panic...I beelined for the first open machine. After a few attempts of inserting my debit card, I decided to seek guidance. The line behind me was made up of a variety of characters: a tall lanky Asian man with feathery hair and thick rimmed glasses, a woman in a long black down coat and a grad student type with curly auburn hair.

The short round attendant turned suddenly, "Who's up?" The Asian man lifted a small worn biblical stories book and inquired,

"How much for four copies? I must copy four pages from this book." He opened his left hand to expose a mixture of nickles and pennies.

"Ten cents per sheet, for regular copy paper."

"Ten cents?!"

"That's what I said."

"I don't think you are right. I could go to those uh delis, you know with the Pakistan and India men and it would be four cents."

*Silence*

"Well I could. Four cents!"

The cashier shrugs. A second cashier suddenly drops her face into her hands, "It's down again. The computer system is down again!"

The woman in the long black coat pulls a German-English phrase book from her pocket and begins to read from it. A third cashier shakes his head, "Do you have an account?"


"Account, yes!"

The first cashier walks past the one who is still clasping her face and raises a brow to me.

"I'd like ten copies of this. Resume grade paper, please."

He knods.

"You're patient," I offer.

"Yea, well it's that or kill myself."

He steps away. The disheveled cashier perks up, "How many are you getting?"

"Ten"

"It will be one-ninety-five."

I hand her my debit card.

"I, well, it will be a minute for the computers."

"NP. "

*10 minutes later*

"I have some change, well actually I only have....a dollar seventy-eight."

I gaged her reaction: disappointment.

The grad student type pulls out a quarter and drops it on the counter."

"Thank you."

The first cashier returns with the copies, "Since you're so patient. I have something for you- you watch Youtubes?"

"Sure"

He pulls out a scrap paper and carefully scripts, jojobanana1, "That's me. That's for you."



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Oh that's good. I should document my time there. This guy was calling his computer sir mix a lot and then had to stop helping me temporarily while he ran outside to cover his brand new vespa with kinkos banners because it was surprisingly RAiNING in seattle! 45 minutes later he had scanned 8 pages of schoolwork onto a CD for me.