Posting from Kinko’s…

And let me tell you….call it Kinko’s, call it the FedEx Kinko’s Center–it doesn’t matter. Whatever you call it, it’s always gonna be Stinko’s to me.

Come in today with a simple mission–scan 1 photo, save a high-res digital copy to a disk or somewhere online, and get out. But of course, no trip to Kinko’s could ever be that simple. The following account comes to you from within the Kinko’s, where pathetically shrimpy bandwidth has me trapped for, apparently, about the next 20:13.

When I arrive, the guy notifies me that they only have one DIY scanner….great, what are the odds that I’ll actually be able to get on that computer anytime this century. No doubt there will be some grandmother of twelve who has decided to make today the day she digitizes her entire photo archive, so she can kick it in Kinko’s air-conditioned climes on a hot Santa Monica day for the entire afternoon.

Shockingly enough, no grandma in archival process–the scanner computer was completely open. Trying to refrain from verbally uttering ‘holy shit’, I sit down and quickly begin addressing my task at hand.

Since Kinko’s loads all their computers up with this horribly unuseful ‘Start Page’, I decide to just cut to the chase, toss my picture into the scanner, and hit the button on the front. Worst case, I have mistaken a shredder for a scanner and my photo is gone. But that’s not the case, and with a few bleeps and buzzes, the machine starts its thing.

Because I know the clock is ticking, I waste no time making a copy of the scanned image, cropping it, and saving it. In another shocking moment, I find that Kinko’s actually has zip and stuffing capabilities, so I zip up my file and go ask the guy behind the counter for a CD to burn it onto, so I can get out of this place.

“CD Burner ain’t workin’ on that computer,” he informs me in his most astute Kinkos-barista voice.

“Ummm, ok, well, you have any way I can get the 30MB file I just scanned off of that computer?” I inquire.

“You could put it on a Zip disk,” he offers up.

At this point, my brain almost explodes. The girl next to me saw it, and sort of flinched.

ZIP DISK? HOW ARE THESE THINGS STILL AROUND, ANYWHERE? IS THERE ANY PC MAKER WHO WILL STILL EVEN PUT A ZIP DRIVE IN YOUR MACHINE? WHY DON’T YOU JUST OFFER ME A TAPE DRIVE, OR PERHAPS I COULD RECORD A DIGITAL COPY OF MY IMAGE ONTO A BETAMAX TAPE.

“Yeah, well that will get it off, but then I’ll have no way to get it myself, because it isn’t 1996 and no one I know has a working Zip drive anymore,” I reply, utterly exasperated, and still remembering that the meter is ticking on the computer that still holds my credit card in its reader slot like so much meatloaf in John Madden’s belly.

Fortunately, all is not totally lost. I remember that I can actually upload the image from the computer, via a browser, to my CafePress account. Since that’s actually the originally-intended use anyways, I figure it’s no big deal. And hell, Kinko’s should have some crankin’ bandwidth, right? T1, T3, something…right?

Well apparently not. Kinko’s apparently shares a single DSL connection between all of its machines.

This brings us to present–I am sitting here, on Kinko’s machine, telling you just how awful this place really is. Despite how much you think you can make it in and out, trust me–just stay away.

And to FedEx–now that you’re attaching your name to this trainwreck, I really hope you can at least figure out the DIY services you provide…offering people an Internet connection that’s slower than the average cable modem or DSL line? C’mon….that’s just pathetic.

Do I expect any of this to change? Of course not. I hope it does, because where else can you come and work on a computer in a public setting, while listening to a store worker flirting with a customer, who is telling the worker that “she got dumped for LaToya Jackson, because after the surgery her boobs were just kickin’.”