Welcome, new FedEx/Kinko’s Team Member! As you are probably aware, you have recently hit rock bottom, perhaps because of a drug dependency or history of familial sexual or psychological abuse. Here at FedEx/Kinko’s, we’re happy to have you!
As a member of the FedEx/Kinko’s team, it’s your duty to supply a level of service somewhere between a DMV office staffed by deaf mutes and a 24 Hour Fitness where instead of exercycles they have big guys punch you in the stomach.
Customers may call it punishment, but we call it FUNishment! If not, we risk having our pay severely docked and/or a session with “the hose.” Please read this primer in its entirety so as to better understand other ways in which you can incur the wrath of “the hose.”
CUSTOMERS: The Employee’s Worst Nightmare
When dealing with customers, it’s important to maintain a complex, distant relationship, characterized by morose apathy and occasional bouts of manic attentiveness. Sound unnecessarily difficult? It is!
Attending to Customers
The modern FedEx/Kinko’s customer is a person on the go, a businessman or –woman with places to be and things to do. As such, the best way to show them your respect is to provide them a wide berth, attempting neither to interact with them nor help them in any way. When a customer enters the store, try and move to the opposite side. Avoid eye contact, as they may feel that their superiority is being threatened. If they ask you a question, be wary: it may be a test of your fortitude. Play it safe by providing a vague, unsatisfactory answer, or simply by lying. HINT: A fun way to deal with customers is to try and imagine that they are invisible, or simply don’t exist!
Length of the Line
FedEx/Kinko’s employees work diligently each day to string retractable canvas straps between metal poles in the shape of a long line. Honor your fellow employees’ hard work by ensuring the line is kept at a maximum length for as long as possible. Customers will appreciate the more relaxed, European-style experience.
Customers’ Right to Privacy
By entering any of our FedEx/Kinko’s customer service centers, a customer waives all right to privacy regarding his or her photos, files, and/or upskirt shots you may take while they are on the premises. Forge a close personal bond with your customer by openly perusing their photos while assisting them with a print job. To add a degree of intimacy while rifling through their private memories, try muttering “whatever floats your boat,” “ooh…kaay,” or simply let out a low whistle and roll of the eyes. NOTE: Due to a recent lawsuit involving photos of a birth, employees are no longer encouraged to mix in the phrase “I’d hit that.”
Special Night-Shift Sidebar: The Crazy Story
If you have been hired for the FedEx/Kinko’s night shift, it is most likely because you are too crazy to staff the front counter during daylight hours, yet too sane for us to fire without incurring wrongful termination lawsuits. Put your special skills to use by entertaining late night guests with crazy stories about the weirdest thing you ever ate, the clandestine government actions you have been made privy to, or the life-changing acid-fueled road trip you and three fellow ‘Nam vets took across the American Southwest in 1971. Feel free to sprinkle in passionate political rhetoric, threats of violence against public figures, and/or muttered promises to “make them all pay.”
STORE ATMOSPHERE: The Fastest Way to Make Them Leave
A FedEx/Kinko’s customer service center should be more than a collection of self-service photo printers, computer workstations, and lazy, thieving employees. It should be the kind of place where parents take their children to teach them lessons about where they are headed in life if they don’t straighten out. Try and maintain an air of existential misery and tortured, yet undirected rage. If you are particularly well adjusted and find this difficult, use some of the following techniques to blend in with your fellow wraiths.
Downcast Eyes Say “Stay Away”
Much like frogs who expand their throats to frighten other animals away, proper body language can do wonders when it comes to maintaining your own bubble of impenetrably awkward personal space. Keep eyes glued to the floor, shoulders slumped, and breathe through your mouth to give the appearance that you are an unhappy troglodyte of a person, likely to react to a simple request with a surly “fuck off” and wag of the genitals, if not a violent beating.
Fluorescent Lights
It is the duty of all employees to ensure that the fluorescent lights in their FedEx/Kinko’s customer service center are functioning at the proper ratio. That ratio is as follows:
- 40% of lights working properly
- 30% of lights entirely out or with only one tube working
- 20% of lights flashing and buzzing loudly
- 10% of lights shooting live sparks
What Restrooms?
As you have probably become aware, most FedEx/Kinko’s customer service centers, having been built out of renovated slaughterhouses, have no restrooms. You are welcome to urinate or defecate in the alleyway/lunch area behind the store (or, as union contracts dictate, once per day inside the store), but should urge customers to seek restrooms elsewhere.
Smell and Sound: The Forgotten Senses
Make sure that each customer’s experience is a full one by appealing to all of his or her bodily senses. This can be done by simply spilling a few cases of pungent toner in the back room, and ensuring that all equipment in the store accompanies any simple action with an obnoxious beeping noise. This should include the opening of doors, printing of documents, use of scotch tape, or spilling of a case of toner.
NEXT: Managing Crisis! When you’re actually forced to do something
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