My Mother wants me to order and file all of her and My Father's stock records. Still trying to get through them all. Need to three-hole punch them, and then I need to put them in an order that I haven't decided yet.
And there were so many papers that I needed to buy a new three-ring binder. It's an office product, so naturally I go to OfficeMax. A 2" binder cost about $9.50, but I didn't want to make a special trip to Target and who knows how much I would pay in gas for driving there, and it's on the way to Barnes & Noble and the mocha I get while I read magazines there.
A month later, which was Friday, I forget that I also need alphabetized dividers. For some reason, however, I go to Walgreen's, which is separated by a parking lot from OfficeMax, easily within walking distance. There are a lot of things that these two things share, although it doesn't look it on the surface. (Hell, do you know what products Walgreen's is known to sell besides medicine?) But they don't have alphabetized dividers. What they do have, however, are 2" binders -- and it just so happens that they were selling them 5 bucks. Why the fuck would Walgreen's sell binders?
So now I'm kicking myself for going to the vastly expensive OfficeMax to get an office product because that's what they do; they call themselves "OfficeMax" and you automatically go to them for all your business needs even though it could be vastly overpriced. I'm embarrassed to say that I did this for envelopes a couple times. I decided, right there at Walgreen's, that I was going to rectify the situation by going home, taking all the papers out of the binder, finding the receipt and returning it for a refund.
And then, it just so happened that I remembered my mom asked me to get some ink for her fax machine. I did the smart thing and first looked around Walgreen's for the type of ink (she wrote down the information in a small slip of paper I remembered I had in my pants) and how much it was. Seeing that it wasn't there -- OK, so they don't have ink but they do have binders, got it! -- I then went to OfficeMax.
The guys there are usually proactive, but this time around two people actually helped me figure out which one of their huge selection of ink cartridges was the correct one for Mom's fax machine. More often than not I get the feeling they could be overbearing and offer you things to buy that you don't need; I buy stuff here but usually leave walking faster than I normally do. But I actually liked the customer service I got. They told me the HP original ink is $16, but the OfficeMax generic is $14.50. And I also noticed that they set up a new ink refill station. About time; printer ink is one of the most egregiously expensive items in proportion to what you think it should cost, and this hopefully is the start of the pushback against a shady racket. Moreover, they were honest -- one of the guys said that the generic isn't that cheaper than the HP-issued ink, which will definitely work (you always take a chance when you're using ink besides the one the company says you should use), and he warned that the refill for the type of ink for mom's fax machine does only OK.
Great! Thanks for the candor! But ... that makes it that much harder for me to essentially screw them over by returning a product that I have in effect "used" already. I left OfficeMax thinking a different plan: I will return it, but to make it up to them I will buy ink!
Well, that plan blew up in my face that night. I underestimate my mom's enterprising nature; that, or her weird friend that looks like a rat gave her information about a website where she can get ink dirt cheap. I helped her find the site; costs her nine bucks. I bought her a cartridge that night, and I'll buy her another one tomorrow.
But that means my plan's up in smoke. There's no trade-off that'll salve me returning the binder I bought and have already used that I shouldn't've purchased in the first place because I didn't look in Walgreen's because why the fuck should I look in Walgreen's for a 2" binder? And I can't be a dick and just return it to OfficeMax and get my money back. I'll be going to that B&N for the rest of my life. I live close by. They would haunt me the rest of my days. So I'll just keep the binder for $4.50 more than I should've paid for it, and cut back by, I don't know, not going to lunch for a week.
I should've procrastinated.
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