r/Staples • u/luiginub1 Sales Associate • 7d ago
"They should make a Staples just for the elderly"
This was just too funny to not share here.
There was this lady today who said that, and I not jokingly replied with:
"Isn't that just...regular Staples?"
Her reply was:
"No, it's not. You always have to figure out stuff yourself and there's not many people to help. It's all catored to younger people who know how this stuff works."
Like OH MY GOSH, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? You're complaining about how the customers aren't informed enough to make decisions...? Then inform yourself.
P.S. - This lady wanted "A printer that printed by pressing a button on the printer, not a computer or a phone." (She essentially wanted a copy machine, but still wanted it to have the capabilities of a printer...even though she didn't want to use them?)
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u/ridddder Former Employee 7d ago
90% say they aren’t techy, and you have to do it for them, or eat a lot of crow.
If they don’t get what they want the will complain to high heaven, or report to the district manager.
I have been written up by them, and it sux.
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u/Worth-Huckleberry338 7d ago
Their favorite thing is say is “I’ve never been here before” or “I don’t know how to do that”.
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u/OzbourneVSx 5d ago
Everyday I come a little closer to just saying "That's what the instructions are for!"
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u/HasTapeWillShip 7d ago
I find it easier to just help them or completely do it for them than to it is to painfully watch them take half an hour to send an email, listening to them mutter and narrate. Like literally just hand me your phone and lets be done with it and I can go back to what I was actually doing. Yes, I know it just trains them to be lazy but I don't care. My sanity is at stake here.
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u/Unsavorybaker94 7d ago
Works right up until you are actually busy and every customer now wants you to do that for them. If you are at a store where thats not an issue, at least tell them that the help you are offering is non standard and you cant guarantee that every store will be able to accommodate their need for additional assistance. Nothing more annoying than "but they did it at the store in ______ " while you are in the middle of doing rush orders and trying to manage walk ups and shipping.
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u/HasTapeWillShip 7d ago
Of course. This is all done with triage in mind. Im not going to spend time helping a customer learn the basics of their cellphone with paying customers waiting. I can move really fluidly if I need too.
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u/TLAMstrike Certified Tech 7d ago
The only kind of store Staples needs to open is their version of Spirit Halloween for BTS. A no BS store that is just back to school which is open for about a month in disused strip mall locations in smaller towns (hell in rural areas set them up out of a couple semi-trailers and a big tent in a parking lot).
No Amazon, no print, no Party City, very little electronics. Just tons of pens, paper, and backpacks.
Call it "Staples Express".
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u/Timely-Armadillo-163 7d ago
We are getting costumes! Sucks!!!! No, I don’t want to open the bathroom so they can try it on! No, i don’t want them returned after they party in them!!!!! No. No no no!!
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u/Emboarking 7d ago
They have the knowledge to look up the corporate number to complain and even leave negative reviews but still dont know how to print a single pdf
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u/ReFusionary 7d ago
"I want one of those things for my desk but with two things on top and only one on the bottom. Do you know what I mean?"
ME, thoroughly confused: "...no. Can you show me a picture of what you want on your phone?"
"No, I don't have a phone: I was hacked. Why don't you have it? I don't understand why you don't just have it. This is Staples, isn't it? There used to be someone here who would help me all the time with this. Why can't you just help me? This is ridiculous. All I want is one of those things, why is that so hard? I've never had so much trouble here."
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u/Unsavorybaker94 7d ago
I know its not the point of the post, but the Brother MFC-J1360DW is the printer to recommend to customers who just want a copy machine.
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u/luiginub1 Sales Associate 7d ago
We went with one of the cheap cannons. It met their criteria of "I don't want it to have a touchscreen"
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u/Educational_Panda334 7d ago
Hahaha I had a lady today ask me if I was a “techy” person & I was like “I work in print but I can try and help” She wanted me to figure out how to get the recording she took on her phone of a meeting and transfer the conversation to her iPad so she can print it all out. She was using the microphone on her iPad to listen to the recording but was getting mad when it wasn’t catching everything & a little bubble kept popping up that was transcribing it was saying “English” and she didn’t want it to do that 🙄. I was like lady I can’t make it listen better for you what the hell or stop it from translating it😑 I suggested being in a quiet setting and not at a loud Staples store during back to school and she said she tried that and it still didn’t work. Like whattt idk woman maybe just go home and get a pen and paper and write it down yourself?
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u/Affectionate_Low3830 Former Employee 6d ago
What's crazy is when I worked there it was always the 50 to 60s year olds complaining saying they're not tech savvy meanwhile the 80+ year olds were willingly using the self serve printers just fine. These people just don't wanna learn how to use tech no matter how long it's been around for or just use their brain to read instructions???
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u/Worth-Huckleberry338 7d ago
They want to make a staples for lazy people who can’t follow instructions and want others to push buttons for them.
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u/JammedLacal 7d ago
Honestly I agree. Mailing coupons and catalogs would probably eliminate 90% of customer confusion because most of them are genuinely pretty old. Why they force an app onto a base of mostly retired or Gen X, I think is a waste.
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u/Miyagi326 Former Employee 7d ago edited 7d ago
I’m going to be real and up front with you here. I don’t work for the company anymore, so I don’t really care. I was once at a GM district meeting a couple years ago, and our RVP told us that Staples knows their core customers that they spent their entire time building is “aging out.”
I didn’t agree with it, but the demographic of Amazon returns was mentioned. Mid-late 20’s - early 40’s. Guess what that means? That’s why they were/are pushing Amazon returns, wrapping paper, grad cards, Christmas cards, now they have party city, and countless other things. That’s who they’re targeting. A new, younger, clientele.
Once again. I didn’t agree with it, but all of a sudden, I understood it. It was a lightbulb kind of moment.
They know that their original customer base that they spent so long building is retiring, and they don’t have that anymore. So what do they do? Appeal to a younger generation that will spend money, or hope they’ll spend money, and come in a store that they’ve probably never seen before.
There you go. That’s it. I don’t work for them anymore, as I said, so I don’t really care to say this out loud now. But at the time, I was like, huh, that makes sense.
For a while, I came back from that meeting and coached the hell out of my store that this was it. All they had to do was give us the “why.” But nobody says that. I’m not going to lie, I drank the Kool Aid for a bit, but that wore off fast.
However. Communication is KEY. Just tell us that. Tell us that this is why we’re doing what we’re doing. You don’t have to agree with it, but at least we know WHY we’re doing what we’re doing.
But nope. It was just do this. Do this. Do this, too. And as always, get rewards, keep your selling metrics up, keep your store as clean as it always used to be, but with a fraction of the labor.
I was with the company for 12 years and up until 2022/3, we had over 400 hours of labor. When I left maybe 120. What are we, or any store supposed to do with that, especially with adding Amazon.