putting the knit in shizknitz

I have a Type A personality. Especially when it comes to certain things, I can get pretty darn anal (my apartment is not one of them, if you could see it now). One of those is my schoolwork, which has replaced my previous work-work. I like to start projects early (sometimes they don’t get done early) and I like team members who contribute. Not only contribute but those that are smarter, better, faster than me - cause then I can actually learn from them, which I think is the point of all of these damn group projects.

I’m on a team now for one of the most difficult projects in one of the most difficult classes of my life. I am rarely impressed with my own work but between myself and my two other braintrust friends, we have completed an economic profit analysis for one of the largest multi-national beverage companies in the world. Not only do we have numbers and analyses to prove our theory on what drives this company’s profits, we were able to get a former executive to confirm our theory. Nice.

For many of my projects including this one, I typically send it on to Kinkos for color printing and binding. It isn’t cheap - a 41 page paper costs me almost $50 which on a student budget is about 3 Happy Hours. I love the fact they are open 24 hours - I’ve made many overnight dashes out to the Marina Del Rey Kinkos in the past. I was ecstatic when they started to offer the “send your print jobs directly” option on their website. But there’s one problem - what the customer wants with this type of technology is instant gratification. Like ordering stuff from Best Buy online, I want to be able to order it, then run over and pick it up. No waiting, no fuss. However this isn’t so - for either scenario. On the software you install from Kinkos, it automatically wants you to give it 4 hours leadtime on your order. This does not take into consideration how large your request is (whether it be 2 pages or 100) nor does it take into consideration how backed up that specific Kinkos is on their work orders. What proceeds to happen is that I place my order, expecting to pick it up 4 hours later (since that is what I put as my “due time”) but its actually not ready for another 8. That can certainly put a dent in someone’s schedule who is on their way out the door for an important meeting, or class. Good thing for us we’re a few days early on the paper - but still, this is an annoyance.

Now this may seem silly, but in this day in age of supply chain management and automation, can’t they at least have some indicator which will give you a more realistic idea when your request can be fulfilled - based on the size of your order and their current work orders? Especially since Kinkos is FedEx, you would think they have the SCM stuff under control — oh sorry, that was UPS who first mastered that area.

If Kinkos marketing had any thoughts of qualitative analysis on their services, reading blogs with rants and raves would be a good place to start. But that’s only if they’re being sensitive to their consumer needs. Which they should be, since I can certainly afford a cheap laser color from Dell for all of the printing I’ve done so far. As Friedman said in The World Is Flat, as the playing field becomes flattened and competition increases, you must be able to find a way to differentiate yourself. Differentiation can come from things such as customer service. To provide great customer service, you have to KNOW your customer. So listen up Kinkos, I’m pissed that my online print jobs are consistently 8 hours late.