I find shopping for office supplies to be a dreary, life-force draining experience. Going into Staples or Office Depot is almost as bad as getting dragged into a arts and crafts store and being forced to browse through fifty rolls of infinitesimally dissimilar white rolls of yarn. Kill me now. Please. In office supply stores I find some entertainment looking at the computer mice and keyboards and monitors, but that lasts about twelve seconds and then I feel hungover and I start drooling and lying around on the tile floor.

I remember once as a kid my parents took me along when they went carpet shopping, no doubt for some inch thick burnt orange pile. It was the seventies after all. I was so bored I remember lying on my back on one of the giant rolls of shag. I was lying perpendicular to the roll, so my back was arched backwards with the curve of the carpet. I lay there as if I had been injected with a potent parallitic (which, in a way I had). I remember faded yellow tiles in the roof and fluorescent lights buzzing because I stared at the celling for so long. Good thing this wasn’t outside or I would have burnt my eyes out staring into the sun. I was so bored I couldn’t move. I didn’t have the energy to even follow my mom around and whine. I’ve spent many years in therapy dealing with this childhood trauma. I’m in a carpet shopping victim’s support group.

This is how I feel when I go office supply shopping. I pause at the door. I take a deep breath. I get myself psyched up. I’m like Michael Phelps getting in the zone with his iPod and rap music before he lines up on the platform and flaps his arms three times. I need performance enhancing drugs to get in and out with my life.

So today I went to Staples. I could have gone to Office Depot, which is a bit closer to my home. But until today I found Staples to be a bit more survivable for some indefinable reason I can’t really enumerate. I needed to buy manilla folders, laser printer paper, and a Brother labeler (one of those little gizmos that look like a big calculator that print labels on tape).

The reason I needed this stuff is I am now worshipping at the altar of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. This weekend I’m working on my physical filing system. I already have a Dymo label printer, and I labelled a dozen or so folders last night, but I really found the Dymo experience to be quite fundemetally sucktastic. So I’m going with David Allen’s suggestion of a labeler. But I wondering from my story. I’m planning on posting more about my experience with GTD later.

Once in Staples, I found my folders and printer paper fine. No problem. Then I found the labelers. They had a few but the one I wanted only had a (non-functional) display model. No boxes of this specific merchandise anywhere. I needed to look at the box. I wanted to make sure it had two features, an AC adaptor and an automatic cutter. I wandered around a bit looking for one of the red shirted staff members. When I asked him for help he said he needed to find someone else to help me because his shift was up. Um, ok. I’ll wait over in the next isle for this other person. Five minutes later that same dude came over and said he couldn’t find the other guy to help me. Of course, he probably could have helped me by then and I had to bite back a snarky comment.

I asked about the labeler I was interested in. Are you out of stock? Can I look at the box? His reply was that this was a high priced item and they don’t put it on the floor. Did I want to buy it? Why did I just want to look at it? I said I wanted to check a few things on the box before possibly buying it. He disappeared. Five minutes later, another guy comes by. Presumably the dude that was missing in action earlier. We go through the same rigamarole. Almost word for word. At this point I have around fifteen minutes invested in trying to look at the box. He disappears.

After a few minutes I look at my watch. They have five minutes or I’m walking. In about four minutes, yet another employee shows up. I explain again. Same script. Different minute. She at least goes and gets it. She finds me a few minutes later lying on the tile floor and drooling after I attempted to entertain myself looking at Logitech mice. Fail.

She hands me the box which is wrapped in high security cable evidently whose purpose is to securely attach some soft of blinking and beeping anti theft GPS device the size of my head. Whatever. I start reading the box. Looking at what’s included. The features. You know. Shopping. That kind of thing.

She is standing about a foot away watching me closely – as if I’m fondling The Golden Jubilee diamond and I might swallow it at any moment. She asks me if I have any questions about the labeler. I look at her, and think I’m pretty sure you don’t know more about the labeler than what it says right here on the box. This is what I think, but NOT what I say, which is a bit more polite.

Then I wander back to the labeler section (remember I’m standing in my drool puddle in front of the keyboards and mice) because I want to look at the labeler tape, since what comes with it is the “starter pack”. I want to supplement my supplies and future proof my future tape deficit scenarios. She’s right behind me. I slowly stop at my destination afraid if I stop suddenly she’ll run right into me. She stands there watching me, arms across her chest.

Finally I say, “Do you mind if I look at this without you hovering over me?” I’m afraid my tone was probably less than perky and pleased.

She gives me a look like “no way, you’ll stick it under your shirt and boogie right out the door”. Seriously, the look was so filled with distrust and unease I blurted out “I’m NOT going to steal it for God’s sake”. Other customers stop in mid shop and look over. She gave me another look, like I was ten years old, caught with my hand in the gummy bear bulk bin, and she turned on her heel and sped away, no doubt planning to monitor me from afar with infrared binoculars and one of those handheld audio listening devices with the big microphone and satellite dishes attached to a pistol grip.

I then choose my labeler tape, went up to the front, and bought my stuff. This all told took at least twenty minutes longer than it should have and sucked two days of life force right out of me. I probably could, or should, have walked out and gone to Office Depot, but that would have probably cost me more time, and who knows what evil hazing I might have to undergo there. So I just got the hell out with my stuff.

Ask me if I’m going back to Staples. Go ahead ask me.

Let’s talk about this asinine policy for a second. First, this labeler was $99.00 (but it currently has a $50 rebate). Is this really a high priced item? Really? I pointed out several items in boxes next to the labeler display. A $120.00 shredder. A $100.00 wireless phone setup. Why are these in boxes on the shelves? “See, they’re more expensive than the labeler,” I say. I point to the price tags and look quizzically at the Staples corporate representative.

“Well, sir, that’s the policy,” says the glassy eyed, worn out, fed up employee. I could almost hear his unkind thoughts smashing around in his cerebral cortex. Of course I know this isn’t his fault. He’s just trying to get his paycheck and get home to watch America’s got talent because his Uncle Billy Joe Bob is auditioning with his goldfish jugging and yodeling act. He’s got places to be.

I’m so sick of hearing that such and so is the ‘policy’. It’s dehumanizing, and well, just tiring.

I think this ‘policy’ was the brilliant idea of some middle management corporate suit who was trying to prove to his boss that he’s thinking outside the box. He’s trying to show that he’s thinking about saving the company money. Money lost on shoplifting. He’s trying to get that two dollar an hour pay raise. I imagine him sitting in a windowless conference room, at a faded and cracked plastic table, in a folding chair with one short leg, drinking day old Dunkin Donut coffee, nauseous and headachy after a late night of over indulging on of AppleBeeTinis. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But here’s the rub – he’s less concerned about Staples’ customers and more worried about corporate politics. It’s all for show man – it’s all for show.

One last question – does Staples really have problems with gangs of shoplifters absconding with Brother labelers? Is there a black market for these? Do drug dealers label their plastic bins full of their wares with ‘crack’, ‘black tar heroin’, or ‘Amy Winehouse’s pallet of hash’? Does this inconvenience for the customer really outweigh the savings gained by preventing all these labelers from hitting the street? Does repeat business factor into this policy?

I think we know the answer, don’t we. The answer is Staples FAIL.