Rant: Why you should never shop at Office Max

This is a rant.

#OFFICEMAXFAIL

This probably happens everywhere, but I'm specifically writing about the Office Max in the area in which I reside.

Yeah, that's right. I wasn't even there. I'm just expressing my anger after my mother went there.

I guess to understand my rant, I must start at the beginning.


December 25, 2009. Christmas Day. My family is opening presents and I open an electric coin counter bank thing. (Battery operated). I opened it, and my mom said to try it out, it's not the exact one she wanted to get me, but to try it out anyway and if i didn't like it, then she would return it and get me a new one. Well, I opened it up, and put a battery in. The freaking thing didn't even have a friggen battery cover, so the battery was just chilling there. Also it was hard to get in, which means it would also be hard to remove. You could only push one coin in at a time and it would sort it into four slots...quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies. Well, I did that, except it put some dimes in the pennies, pennies in the nickels, quarters didn't fall into their slot. The thing was a mess. So needless to say that one got returned. (Note, this was not bought at office max. it was bought somewhere else, this part is not the rant about office max. that will follow shortly.)

Now, we move on to today, March 12, 2010. My mom went to office max today to find me a new one. She found one that she wanted to get me in the first place. The kind where you can put the wrappers in the tubes. The first one you couldn't put wrappers in the tubes. This is good. ok. Moving on. Time to open the box. Which has a small tear in one corner and its coming apart at the other one where the lid opens. Skeptically I move on to take it out of the box. At this point I think to myself, I wonder if this is used and they just threw it back on the shelf b/c they didn't believe the person who returned it. So I go to take the thing out of the box. And it is extremely hard to remove. (Later I find out this is because the tray didn't shut propperly, making the fit in the styrofoam tight and making the styrofoam expand so it is nearly impossible to remove from said box.) So after literally a good seven minutes, I finally get the thing out of the box. At the bottom, I find the instructions, folded in such a way where the title is not on top, but rather the troubleshooting part. Also a little yellow card with a tab at the bottom which says things on it like "Only put in 1-20 coins, let it finish before putting in more, etc" You know, little reminders so you don't break the thing right away. And because of the tab at the bottom, I'm thinking it was supposed to stick out of the top of the unit, which makes sense. Also a short brown/white hair was in the directions. Normally, I'd freak out but since this wasn't a food item, I didn't think TOO much of it. Even more skeptic, I say No. it's just how it got thrown in at the factory, no biggie. it's fine.

But no. Boy oh boy was I wrong.

I put the tubes in, quarters nickels, dimes and pennies. There is a slot for dollar coins, but I don't have dollar coin tubes and I dont wish to wrap my dollar coins. In the directions it states that you can put between one and twenty coins in at a time. So i figure, I'm not going to press my luck. I will just try it out slowly. So i pick up four quarters. (at this point I want to try each kind of coin separately first, then mix them together). I turn on the thing and put the quarters in. They all fall directly into the "overflow" tray. This is not good. Right off the bat this doesn't work. Well, I try again this time only putting one quarter in. Same thing. So i try the nickels, dimes and pennies. Nope. All fall into the "overflow" tray. Then I notice the tray which holds the wrappers isn't shutting all the way. I knew it wasn't me because I had pushed it in as far as it would go. And gently, too, because that is what the directions said. (and if you know me personally, you can vouch that I take care of my things and I always read the directions. If I didn't take care of my things, then how could I still have my first and only AM/FM radio/Walkman (STILL IN WORKING CONDITION) and my first and only Discman portable CD Player (ALSO STILL IN WORKING CONDITION).) So I take out all the wrappers, and picked up the unit to see if I could see what the problem was. I picked it up and heard a rattling noise, which isn't a good sign. I tried to look in and I saw a dime, stuck in the bottom, which wasn't letting the tray close properly. Yes, a United States legal dime. It's legit. A ten cent piece. So, now, compliments of the freaking moron who broke this in the first place, I am ten cents richer. (yes, because I shook the item rattling in there to see what it was and it fell out). So I close the tray, and lo and behold, IT CLOSES ALL THE WAY!!!!! HORRAY!!!

theoretically, it should work now. So I put my wrappers back in the slots, and try again. each coin by itself first then a mix.

It worked. But I wanted to see if it really put the right amount of each coin in the tubes. Sadly, I only had enough to test the quarters and pennies. The quarters worked just fine. The pennies gave me a problem. First it only put 49 in. So i added another one and tried again. This time, nope. still 49. So I took those 49 and added 3 more pennies to make a total of 52. Now, if you know anything about american money, when you roll pennies, you roll them in rolls of 50 cents. (which is 50 pennies, in case you can't count). So I threw in two extra, which, because this machine has an overflow tray, when i was finished, there should have been 50 pennies in the roll, and two in the overflow tray. There were three in the tray. THREE. which means....49 in the roll again. I counted it and sure enough...49. So i did it again and the third or fourth time (i honestly lost count) it finally worked. 50 pennies in the roll, 2 in the overflow tray. Horray.

Then I take out my dollar coins from my collection pouch just to see if it sorts them correctly.

Beef number 1: It doesn't specify what kind of dollar coins it accepts. See, I have a silver dollar, two sacagawea dollars and another silver dollar (the size of the sacagawea dollar). Well obviously the silver dollar does not fit. Because it's huge. The sacagawea and the regular dollar coins fit fine, but being specific would have been nice.

Beef number 2: Who the heck has that many dollar coins anyway? Also, I don't know if dollar coin wrappers exist. I've never tried to wrap dollars, and I wouldn't know how many to put in a tube, also I HAVE NEVER SEEN DOLLAR COIN WRAPPERS. And i'm not about to ask my bank either, especially on a friday, and especially because the tellers (save the one nice old lady) all hate me because I bring a lot of coins to deposit along with my weekly pay check. (I have a job in which I receive tips).

Then I look at the box again and notice that it lists some things. One of these things being that using the coin wrappers with the machine is optional. then in parenthasis [in case you didn't know these are parenthasis: ( )] it says samples included...like this: (Samples Included.). If something says SAMPLES INCLUDED, doesn't it mean that there would be samples in the box? I'm guessing it wouldn't be a lot, but probably one wrapper of each type of coin? This was the final straw. The dime jammed in the bottom was a dead giveaway that the item was just put back on the shelf.

Here's the part that completely pissed me off though. My mother, who is trying to do something nice by replacing the bum christmas present, got ripped off. BY OFFICE MAX. If I have a beef about the operation of the device, I'd bring it up with the company who manufactures it. But this time, it's a beef with the store that sold the product. Office Max.

Office Max used to be awesome. I used to get all my school supplies there. It was one of my favorite places to shop. Yes, I even got those lisa frank folders when i was in elementary school. Then staples came along and office max fell into the crapper. It's really downhill now. I don't even know how they have stayed open because I never see anyone shop there. (i'm talking specifically about the location where my mother bought the faulty product.) (Again, I was not there when my mother bought this, but I was there a few months ago with a friend who needed to buy a permanent marker, and that was the closest store to where we were that had them.)

How in the hell could you put a product back on the shelf knowing it was damaged or did not work properly? HOW?! TELL ME OFFICE MAX!!!! Because if you know the answer to this, I would like to know. I'm sure the reason it was returned was that it didn't work. Well, if something doesn't work, you send it back to where you bought it from and GET YOUR MONEY BACK! So, because the person bought it from office max, they returned it to office max. So, Office Max should have sent it back to the company and gotten their money back. But instead they obviously put it back on the shelf. And resold it. At full price, I'm sure. To my mom. Who bought it, not knowing that the piece of crap was USED AND DIDN'T WORK (until I fixed it) AND THAT THE SMAPLE TUBES WERE NOT IN THERE! (now, this didn't tick me off until I read the box and there were no tubes in there. I have plenty of tubes because I have to roll my coins regardless of whether I have a machine to help me do it or not. So I used my own tubes, but if something says it has a sample in it, MAKE SURE IT FREAKING HAS THE SAMPLE IN IT BEFORE PUTTING IT BACK ON THE SHELF TO RESELL. And if it doesn't have the sample in it and it looks used (like the one i have does) and you still want to re-sell it....PUT IT IN THE FRIGGEN CLEARANCE SECTION.

again, #OFFICEMAXFAIL

Office Max no longer has my business, not that it ever did in the first place.

End Rant.

&