People Suck - II

I'm feeling surly about life still. Ok, not really. But I am up in arms about some stuff. Where's the common sense in this world gone? Where's the customer service? I recently attended a time management class to improve...well...my time management. We are hoping it helps me be more focused and productive at work. One of the things that came out of the class was that I need a planner, as opposed to a PDA. It's interesting that the time management trainer concluded this. He said I was a personality type who would get a Palm, fill it with addresses and data, and then never use it. I'd say he is dead on since that has already happened. But I digress. I needed to get a pen and paper style planner. So, I went to Office Despot knowing full well that finding a 2006 planner was going to be tough, it being April and all. My plan was to find one of the handful of leftover planners they had that was now 1/3 useless and get it at a deep discount. I wanted to make sure it worked for me before I invested in a more serious system...

Luck was with me. I searched for close to half an hour, but found a plain, black, 2006 calendar that had all the features I wanted. It didn't have a price on it, though, and wasn't in the discount aisle. So, I brought it up to the checkout to find out what the damage would be. The woman behind the register was working another task, but stopped to attend to me. The exchange went something like this

Me: Can you please tell me how much this is?
Her: *Boop* Thirteen ninety-nine.
Me: (incredulously) It's not marked down? It's a 2006 planner.
Her: (like I'm a moron) It *is* 2006.
Me: Yes, but we're partway into the year. A third of this planner is useless.
Her: I'm sorry, but that is the price.
Me: There are some planners that run from August '06 to August '07 that are similarly priced. Why would anyone pay the same price for something that is obsolete?
Her: Well, I can't mark it down.

I shook my head and started to walk away. She was a manager. If she didn't have the authority, who did? I was just thinking to myself what a stupid store Office Despot was when she returned to her previously abandoned task. She had a price gun with ornage labels in it and was tagging merchandise. And what did the orange tag mean?

Her: Oh, I'm marking this stuff down.

But no, my disgust was not yet complete. What items was she marking down? 2006 planners.

Categories: Rant, ConsumerRights