January 18, 2007
Office Despot
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Something happens to me whenever I go into an office supply store. I get a buzz (and no, not from the Wite-Out) because there's just so much cool STUFF! I can barely contain my excitement as I flit among all the different kinds of paper, card stock and poster board, various shapes and sizes of functional doo-dads to go on the desktop, and big ticket items - furniture, monitors, printers, whiz-bang computers - to cram onto my wish list. And the pens, oh sweet Jesus the pens!
Of course budgetary constraints usually sober me up in short order, and yesterday my inebriation was abruptly squelched by the fact that an ink cartridge, just a black one and the generic brand at that, costs TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. I knew the things weren't cheap because I've bought them before, but for some reason it just hit me there at the register (they have them stocked behind the counter, I suppose because they cost their weight in silver), and with what I consider to have been fairly restrained incredulity I asked the clerk, "For real?" My voice may have cracked just a bit.
So my thought on this is that somehow I must be the genius appointed to invent the refillable ink cartridge. Of course then the forces of cartridgenious no good will dispatch their minions to dispatch me from this plane of existence, and then within a few months some giant conglomerate will invest in a way to make color laser printers as affordable as a DVD player, thus rendering my martyrdom insignificant.
So that's $29.66 out of thirty, here's your change, sir - you have a wonderful evening.
.
Something happens to me whenever I go into an office supply store. I get a buzz (and no, not from the Wite-Out) because there's just so much cool STUFF! I can barely contain my excitement as I flit among all the different kinds of paper, card stock and poster board, various shapes and sizes of functional doo-dads to go on the desktop, and big ticket items - furniture, monitors, printers, whiz-bang computers - to cram onto my wish list. And the pens, oh sweet Jesus the pens!
Of course budgetary constraints usually sober me up in short order, and yesterday my inebriation was abruptly squelched by the fact that an ink cartridge, just a black one and the generic brand at that, costs TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. I knew the things weren't cheap because I've bought them before, but for some reason it just hit me there at the register (they have them stocked behind the counter, I suppose because they cost their weight in silver), and with what I consider to have been fairly restrained incredulity I asked the clerk, "For real?" My voice may have cracked just a bit.
So my thought on this is that somehow I must be the genius appointed to invent the refillable ink cartridge. Of course then the forces of cartridgenious no good will dispatch their minions to dispatch me from this plane of existence, and then within a few months some giant conglomerate will invest in a way to make color laser printers as affordable as a DVD player, thus rendering my martyrdom insignificant.
So that's $29.66 out of thirty, here's your change, sir - you have a wonderful evening.
.
Labels: ink, martyrdom, office supplies
