My Office Depot Story

After perusing the limited display of printer cartridges without provoking any interest from the earphone-armed store personnel, Kathy and I finally located the four cartridges that we needed for the printers.  It is amazing to me, but they seem to all run out at the same time.  Anyway, after finding the cartridges and a register at which someone from Office Depot was standing, I was waited on by a person who seemed to be the duty operator for the store as well as my cashier.  During my entire transaction, she was talking on the phone with another customer about a complaint that needed the store manager.  I was shown (not told) my total by flipping around the display at the register.  As I dutifully filled out my check, she continued to talk on the phone and when I had finished showed me a message on the credit card portal that said that I had given Office Depot permission to process a one-time Electronic Funds Transfer as a check transaction.  I asked what would happen if I didn’t sign the display authorizing the transfer since she held my check already signed.  Of course, she couldn’t answer my question, grunted expressively (a trait that she had to learn from the personnel at Walmart) and stood there.  Kathy urged me to sign the EFT authorization and I did.  Then, the cashier handed me a receipt, grunted at the information on it, and handed me back my check.  That whole “give me back my check routine” irks me.  I stood there in line and filled out a check instead of using my debit card, and she handed it back to me after doing the same thing to my account that a debit card would have done.  If Office depot doesn’t want checks, then put up a sign so that people know before they take the time to write a check. That is assuming , however, that the store has someone on the payroll who can read, write, and find the materials–after all it is an office supply store.  Also, it would be fabulous if the cashier with whom I am working could talk to me instead of answering the phone and trying to explain to another dissatisfied customer that the assistant manager’s boss is the store manager, and the one on the left is in the middle, etc.  While this was happening, I counted five people not doing anything but looking at me looking at them–one of them could have answered the phone because they obviously were too dumb to operate the cash register.  I sure hope that Staples takes checks.