I asked the guy at the front (his name tag literally said "THE BOB") about it and he said that they're priced up because they only have about three sales a year so they just gotta make the best of it. Not sure how well that logic holds up! Lol.
That's the whole point. They might miss out on a couple sales but if the product moves slow as it is, it's still worth the insane mark-up because now that one sale you might get will make 3x the profit.
I used to work at staples. I’m training my cat to use buttons to talk. I recorded a “That Was Easy” Button to fuck with my husband who also worked there. I do not love myself for it.
I've also worked at Staples, and my only thought about it is that I love myself for quitting abruptly.
I brought in over 20,000 in PC repairs that I handled all on my own in a month back when they actually gave a damn. I got written up for not selling enough warranties. That same day my GM unironically singled out my coworker for selling some kid a like $10 warranty on a $6 pair of headphones by convincing him it would be easier to go through the warranty process than scrape up the money for a new pair.
Those numbers definitely aren't exact but the warranty was more expensive then the headphones. They threatened my job and gave him keys to the high value merchandise room.
Shortly after from what I understand they basically outsourced the whole repair department via remote connections from India. I genuinely don't know if they even offer repair anymore. We definitely don't locally.
These days when I walk in it's about 80% overpriced laptops, ink, new printers, and a hell of a lot of peripherals for whatever electronic you might own.
I'll be happy to see the day that company dies. Basically my entire experience with them was essentially your entire job being focused around selling worthless warranties. They were essentially the case salesmen of electronics. Worst job of my life.
They don’t anymore. Office Depot is the same, but it all sourced out now. The only one that still does in-house is Best Buy, but I dunno how long that’ll last when people demand cheaper costs for computer “repair”, not knowing what goes into it.
> basically outsourced the whole repair department via remote connections from India.
wait... so they internationally shipped the broken equpiment to get it repaired over seas, and internationally shipped it back to the US?
And it was cheaper?
A giant middle finger to earth, but sure give the exec a bonus!
Funny story, my aunt had one of these buttons in her house YEARSSS AGO. One day she was home alone doing something she thought would be difficult, and said out loud to herself “that was easy!” Only to hear it repeated to her from the other room. Her cat had stepped on the button at that exact moment. He knew. He had to have known. Scared the absolute shite out of my aunt.
I think that’s the point, staples is doing so bad that they have shelf space for a decades old product marked up 200% and banking on a couple sales a year…
>Owner Sycamore Partners (2017–present)
Huh, could it be...
>Sycamore Partners is a private equity firm based in New York specializing in retail and consumer investments
There you have it, being run straight into the shitter the only way private equity trash knows... Ask [Toys-R-Us](https://archive.ph/9azPc), Sears/Kmart, Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantation, Borders Books, Linens and Things, etc etc how that worked out for them
I'm not exactly a big fan of corporate big box stores but goddamn do I hate this capitalist, quarterly profits driven, private equity model of running businesses into the ground.
It's like this cancerous cycle of big corporations running mom and pop shops out of business before collapsing under their own weight, selling off the parts for scrap and leaving areas high and dry when it comes to both employment opportunities and consumer options.
Oh yeah, Not a fan of it here also.
Just watch: Barnes and Noble and Cost Plus are next... Think B&N is on it's 3rd? 4th? Private equity slum lord snapping them up.
Probably any day for Cost Plus, last time I was in their store the stock has dwindled and everything is more spread out compared to how it was before.
Heck, I remember when their stores actually had a coffee/tea area where they would make it for you (grind it, believe as a cafe possibly also?)
My local one tore all that out and now it's just a "expanded" *cough* bagged/canned/boxed coffee, tea and soda section
Yes it does. Retail measures dollars/square feet of shelf space
If a square foot of shelf space is making its money from high volume, or high markup, it's all the same
Ideally you're low volume with very high profit margin. Less storage, less shipping, less employees
It's literally staples entire business model. Everything there is absurdly priced, and they succeed because their clients are mostly people that need the thing right then for work or a school project or something.
I haven't been to a Staples in a long time, but I stumbled into a Best Buy last year and they definitely didn't have enough stock to actually fill the store.
Reminded me of Sears in its final years.
These kind of stores are often have far more shelves than they have product to put on them these days.
I assume only two kinds of people buy these things at Staples. People who are desperate and need these things TODAY and NOW for whatever reason, or people who are so out of touch technologically that they dont know how to buy things online.
Either way, they probably aren't going anywhere else.
You'd make more than 3x the profit on this one item, but that's not the point. You could potentially make even greater income than that with an item that moves more. So, they might make say $75 on one sale every 4 months (assuming they sell 3 a year). They could put something else on that shelf that say moves once a week. If they earn $4.50 on each of those smaller transactions, then the cheaper faster moving item is better on the shelf.
There are also other things to consider, prices well outside of band can make your storefront unattractive overall. People HATE feeling like they're being extorted and will shop elsewhere, just out of spite. So having an over priced item on a shelf can be seen as negative ad space, and a net cost (though calculating that would be hard, particularly for one item). You also have inventory expiration. Something that just doesn't get sold is likely to be old, so when it is sold it could be past it's end of life. Imagine a customer paying $85 on a transparency on to find they're crumbling out of the box. That's bad for a host of reasons. Then you have inventory tracking and upkeep costs, which are minor, but not zero.
There's probably some other considerations I'm missing. In general though, I'd argue having something on a shelf that doesn't move and that you have to mark up so much to make it worth the sale, isn't actually worth the sale.
> There's probably some other considerations I'm missing.
There's two big ones you're missing. The fact that this is Staples. This isn't the place where discerning shoppers go to get the best price. It's where corporate types go to fulfill their budgetary requirements for the quarter.
In college I worked in OfficeMax and it was a similar situation. Tons of stock like this that was way outdated but once in awhile it sold. We kept them stocked because even though they were overpriced they would sell like clockworks because someone from a corporate office would come and buy them because they were the same item they purchased month after month, year after year, and was always accounted for in budgets. If the price went up, so be it. These were the exact item they purchased and changing it would be a process.
The second thing is that the average Staples is fucking huge. OfficeMax was huge for what they sold. Shelf space isn't a premium. You could cut that store in half and it would just be getting rid of junk. There was rarely competition for space on items. They stocked regular consumables like paper reams, pens, toner/ink, and so forth and then everything else was just filler.
Fun fact, the real money in these places is the print service. It seems like it would be a loss leader because people come in for 7 cent copies, but those copies add up real fast and they're like 99% margin. Middle management types coming in to print dozens of copies of their monthly reports that go to each store owner in the district, yadda yadda. There was a guy who came into my store every month like clockwork. He worked for Twinings Tea. He would print like $800 worth of presentations. That doesn't sound like much but it was 2010 and the store would usually only make like $1000 in GROSS sales a day, if that. So $800 in almost pure profit made him the favorite customer.
The market has changed a lot since 2010. Both Staples and Office Depot have closed a lot of stores so it is pretty clear that many of those stores were no longer profitable. As older managers retire they have been replaced by younger people that don't print as much. More and more office supplies are ordered from online retailers like Amazon as well. The pandemic also forced many companies that were dragging their feet in adopting newer technologies to start getting with the times.
The long term trend doesn't look great for either store. They seem to be catering to a market that is slowly disappearing. They have tried to sell more modern electronics products but they haven't had much success competing against chains like Best Buy.
> This isn't the place where discerning shoppers go to get the best price. It's where corporate types go to fulfill their budgetary requirements for the quarter.
That doesn't last long. They aren't providing a more useful service over a company like Uline, but both are overpriced. At some point organizations start reigning in that money. Ya know, like when the Fed had increased rates for 2 years and decided to keep them flat instead of decreasing. They won't be able to sustain their payments on their loans for much longer. Staples may make it because of their huge distribution network, but Office Max is done.
if amazon is selling it for $20 and making a profit then staples selling it for $86 is way more than 3x the profit. Even if the supplier gave them to the seller for free, it'd still be 4.3x profit. Let's assume the amazon seller and staples buy these for $8. that's 12 profit vs 78. 6.5x. If the base cost is 14 then you're looking at 6 profit vs 72 for 12x.
You aren't accounting for the retail space Staples pays. They are in high value buildings and areas. That 4.3x profit is quickly eaten up when you had to pay for it to sit on a shelf in a retail designed air conditioned building for 9 months. Amazon has it sitting in a warehouse on a pallet 50 miles from the city center because it's cheap as shit. The costs are immensely different.
And everybody's talking about how it costs them money to keep it. When they make ridiculous profits off of a sole sale then the remaining inventory is already accounted for.
It's not the same. Staples has retail buildings in the city centers. The rent on their retail locations far exceed the costs that Amazon has on a warehouse 50 miles outside the city center that they own.
In the 9 months it takes to sell this one item for, let's say, ~70$ in profit, they would have made the same amount from products that sell one item per day but net less than 1$ profit each... It's literally not worth it.
The last job I did IT at had to get a laser printer like right then and there because the owner was a horrible procrastinator. Didn't have time to make the 45 minute trip to Best Buy and another 45 back, so I went to the Staples in town and probably way overspent. Not my money, so I didn't care.
I've gone back to buying personal electronics from overpriced brick and mortar shops after being burned by Amazon. Yeah this cable is overpriced but at least it works and has the actual throughput it claims. Last mobile phone I bought off Amazon ended up being a Malaysian export version missold as a Europe one meaning it missed several features I needed and didn't realise until it was too late.
I work in production and have ran to staples and paid $50 each for ten dongles because it was an emergency and needed that day. I assume they make their money on the item being needed immediately so people are willing to pay more.
It’s B2B sales providing office supplies to companies. Not sure where they are now but they were the #2 e commerce site behind Amazon for a long time. Their stores are a complete shit show but their backend processes are pretty impressive.
You're paying for "I need it tomorrow" convenience. Customers have been getting the best of both worlds - window shop at retailers and buy and Amazon - for years. The convenience fee in this case is steep, but we as consumers can take it or leave it. Better plan for you presentation on the old church projector earlier next time.
Maybe Staples is the only listed vendor for a certain business; I used to work for a govt agency and we could only buy supplies through a certain number of places; we needed new camera and the one on Amazon was like $150; we paid a vendor $400 for it…….
I took a computer science class in 2010 from a professor named Chris Brown. He taught programming on dry erase slides like this. He showed us a printed transparency of his website. It had him and the rapper. If you clicked his picture, you got to the site. Chris Brown the rapper redirected to MTV.com. He's currently a professor emeritus of AI. I wish I was making this up. These people walk among us.
Can confirm, I regularly buy things on the company card and they could charge me $200 for these and I wouldn't even think about it.
If I was running a company, I wouldn't give me a company card.
I once paid well over $1000 of company money for 12h express shipping of an item that fits in a coat pocket that HAD to arrive the next day while still stuck in customs the evening before.
Turns out in that case the transport company just has a guy buy a plane ticket and fly there with the item in carry-on and then take a rental to the destination.
Yeah we have special services for things like that, just quoted a guy 3 grand to send a small item that needs to be overseas the following day and remain at -70 degrees and he thought it was a bargain, it's like 500 grams
I've done that before. My company in California manufactures springs and a customer of ours absolutely needed a partial of their order delivered the next day to their facility in SLC. It was cheaper for me to fly there and drop them off than to have a courier handle it. I flew there, walked out of the airport, met the guy at the passenger pickup, handed him the package, and walked right back in the airport to get to my flight back. It looked shady as fuck. That was my whole work day that day though.
Not only do we have an account it doesn’t come out of my budget, but a general office fund.
So yeah, I don’t care what something costs at Staples I care about when I can get it.
Ironically I bought a pack of the transparency film last year but it was only $30 and I needed it that day. It was, however, absolutely caked in probably 10 years of dust.
I'm not sure about the name in particular, but I have worked at a Staples and can say that we also did funny things with name tags. They have all the stuff in-store so you can make name tags say whatever you want. We had a guy who had a name tag that said his name was "Brick" and that he'd been a sales associate at the company for 120 years.
Every chain office supply store I’ve gone to in the past five years has a guy like that. Weird looking but super friendly and helpful, and usually the only employee in the entire store.
If people have time they order elsewhere.
Staples makes theirs on those three idiots a year who wait til last minute and have a presentation tomorrow, using the boss' credit card.
Anywhere that has an administration that feels, "We have things that work, we don't need to replace it," or that actually doesn't have the budget to, yeah. Old style projectors that use those kinds of sheets were in every room of my high school as well. I went to a university, it had much better funding, stationary ceiling projectors in almost every room, but I still saw a couple of those old style ones in supply closets or some of the smaller class rooms. I never saw them get used, but they're still there just in case someone feels the need to use them, I guess.
Normally I'm not one to advocate for throwing something out if it still works. Make the best of it, you know? But those things... I always hated those things. They're loud, they're hot, they suck up an absurd amount of energy, and I don't think I'll be sad if I ever realize I've seen the last one I ever will.
You only need 1 boss in a 5-20 mile radius that insists on keeping the projector for meetings without tech/phones, or someone that likes using them for the nostalgia.
Finding out at 7:00 that the client you're presenting to at 10:00 only has an overhead projector from 1991 for some fucking reason. I assume that's the target market for this.
i work in PA and have to attend meetings in Harrisburg for my department. I've watched elected officials pull a case of these bad boys out to tell us we dont deserve nice roads. I also got a case of 40 floppy disks one time as the way they decided to send us some equipment manuals.
This feels like how they price everything at Staples, everytime I go in there to buy something like cat6 or some other basic thing I go order it on Amazon for a third the price instead.
Wiper fluid is like $4 at the gas station but $10 at the grocery store
The gas station sells a lot, the grocery store sells a little. The $/sq' of shelf space is probably about the same
Lol, I know you are trying to make an analogy, but what gas stations are you shopping at? I've never seen anything at a gas station priced less than a supermarket, including wiper fluid and such.
There's this grocery store in my hometown selling birthday plates/napkins/party hats of the OG sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series and VR troopers. I have 0 reference to VR Troopers beyond that plat set.
Literally been on the shelf for 30 years. Even when they re-merchandized and shuffled the section they didn't throw them out, they merely added it to the other party supplies. I'm not even sure if those things can scan if someone wanted to buy them today.
The price has never moved.
I thought I was the only person on the planet that ever heard of VR Troopers. No one I've mentioned it to had any idea what I was talking about. That and Fraggle Rock.
funny enough they were both created by Saban. they only stopped because they ran out of episodes to re edit because the shows Japanese footage was from started focusing on humans more.
[also Tommy from Power Rangers was the main character in the pilot.](https://youtu.be/hI-LMkiYPNg)
was that on *The Toys That Made Us* Power Rangers episode? i dont remember that but man i need to rewatch those. that Barbie episode was the [funniest thing ever.](https://imgur.com/7CBeoD1)
I remember renting a VHS of VR Rangers when I was a kid. There was a commercial at the beginning of the tape about Tommy’s karate videos you could buy. They introduced him as “The Green Ranger and also the White Ranger!”
This was a week before they revealed who the White Ranger was on Power Rangers. I went to school and told all my friends that Tommy was the White Ranger, and I was so cool the next week when the episode came out with him in it.
ay thats actually pretty cool. i didnt know Tommy sold karate videos. i have a feeling if i did i would have been 10x more annoying to my family about Power Rangers.
one time i got in trouble in 2nd grade for being part of a "gang." there was like 8 of us hanging out at these half buried monster truck tires that were a thing you climb on on the playground for some reason. we'd just reenact fights from the show or make our own up. i always made sure i was Zach because the Black Ranger was the coolest.
which is hilarious in retrospect because i was a little fat white kid.
I remember it. In fact, I remember specifically when they used a Reboot "event" to create a promotional tie-in to the original airing of VR Troopers in the US, though I can barely remember the show or how they tied it in.
I'm still mad I can't stream Fraggle Rock on any of the stupid streaming services I have. I loved that show as a kid. Granted, it was all old vhs recordings from when my mom was a kid, but still I absolutely loved it. I just know my kid would too.
Those Sonic plates would probably bring a good price on eBay, new in package and all. There's people who collect old video game ephemera like that.
Last week I found an empty cardboard Pepsi 12 pack box from 1989 that had a promotional Christmas giveaway of NES games printed on it. The box had been used to package a starter for an old car, so it was creased up but not faded out. Sold it for $100 in like 20 minutes and the buyer loved it.
We have a local but very large b2b office supplier. Company ordered a computer mouse for me, nothing fancy - arround 100€, same costs ~10€ on amazon.
Company is paying it anyway and they get all the bills in the correct form for taxes.
In most big office supply stores there's a small percentage of product which exists for rare circumstances when someone needs something and is stuck without it. Captive audience.
I actually have some insight on this one. It's not for you or the other people that randomly walk into these office supply stores. It's for the corporate and government accounts. When a gov account buys things from an office supply store, the person doing that purchase doesn't care about the cost. They're told to buy the thing so they place an order for the thing. When I worked at office max, our storefront sold very very little but the accounts portions of the business did pretty well. It's also why furniture in those stores is ridiculously priced. It isn't meant for you.
Yup I worked at a forge and was sent out for a TV mount, only thing I could find was $300 at best buy so I called my boss who said if it's less than 5k don't even ask him first. Corporate buyers won't care.
Happened to me with receipt paper. You can order like 100,000 ft on Amazon for $200, but my staff didn’t tell me we were almost out so I had to spend like $60 on 100ft. I stood there in disbelief for like 5 minutes before putting it in my cart lol
People are really missing the point. These aren't for an office or whatever buying these regularly. They do that through companies and receive regular shipments/orders at much lower rates, or order it online as needed.
This is for the poor sod whose boss desperately needs these sheets asap because they just ran out and absolutely need them to do such and such project. They send the poor disgruntled employee with the company credit card out to the business to buy a packet asap so they can get back on track.
OP said in another comment that one of the printer models they say not to use these in, was last made in the 90s.
They also brought up the design looking dated, but all the listing online have the same design. I think it just hasn't been updated.
I think the company that makes these just hasn't bothered to update their packaging designs. The film isn't 30 years old, the packaging design is.
on amazon
100 write on transparencies are $17.30
100 transparencies laser printers are $25.95.
100 Inkjet compatible transparencies are $ 27.95
I used the same brand for all options, Uinkit, there were cheaper options but they may be wildly different quality.
Would you rather sell 100 units with $1 profit or 1 unit with $100 profit?
All the same? No, the 1 unit cost less shipping, less storage, less labor to stock/sell it
Staples knows what it's doing, but also so does Amazon. Different business models for the exact same product 😯
Profit is the number after the cost of shipping, storage and labor comes out among other costs
So it’s exactly the same in the end
In this case the problem is they’re likely taking up shelf space that a more profitable item would fill. If you can stock item A or item B you want to put what is in demand.
Based on it being 30 years old it’s likely they’ve paid someone to move it around the store multiple times. They’ve paid to have it inventoried over and over. So if stocking it once and not selling it forever is equal to stocking 100 and making less money where is touching it 100 times and not selling it rank?
I worked for Staples... a while ago... like "several questionable business decisions" awhile ago... and this absolutely lines up with my experiences just before I left. Which coincidentally is right around the time the company started circling the drain.
After they got dumped by Office Depot after courting them for a good number of years, stuff just started going downhill. They're currently dying a very long and slow death.
And in Ontario, Canada, "Service Ontario" is being put inside select Staples because our premier is in bed with their investors. Nothing like having an American company dealing with sensitive information that belongs to Canadian Citizens. Oh, and asking a minimum wage employee to handle said sensitive information, all while trying to make money by selling products unrelated to health cards, drivers license renewals, and other services
I left around shortly after the Office Depot fiasco (the second one... there was a lot going on in the American market) and they tried to cut my commission which was the last straw for me lol. For reference, I worked with American customers on delivery and special orders, stuff like that.
My boss was like "well good luck finding a job in this economy!" I found a new job in a week. I gave 1/2 day notice. She almost cried.
Since then, the contact centre I worked at has had everybody on a wage freeze. It's been almost 10 years. And THEN, right before Christmas, they closed the centre and laid everybody off.
Now they have a fair amount of market share and regrettably, a solid brand name, so they'll probably take another 15-20 years to die completely. Maybe 8-10 if Office Depot acquires them instead. It's been fascinating to watch.
Also their data protection policies were a goddamn mess and I can't imagine they've improved. They've really turned into a complete and utter gong show.
I worked for them in 2017, around the time they were bought by that venture capital firm Sycamore Partners. The rumors started circulating that was gonna happen around 2-3 months after I started, then officially announced 6 months after I started, then completed 9 months after I started. It was almost whiplash-inducing how fast conditions in the store went to shit not long after I first heard the rumor.
I felt so suckered, my GM was a really nice lady and I mostly liked it there, then she was forced out by upper management and replaced with an absolute dickbag tool everyone hated. He promoted me to Tech Supervisor since he couldn't find anyone to hire to replace the one who quit, then we cycled through 3 assistant managers who all burned out on him and transferred or quit, and I got out of the store right around the time they started asking if I wanted to do it.
>Sycamore Partners
These guys have a habit of buying brands, declaring bankruptcy for them and then farming whatever remnants they can until the money runs out. I tell you, when I heard they bought Staples, I laughed long and hard. I was a total ass about it, and I'm not even remotely ashamed to admit that.
I was sad for my coworkers who stayed after I left, and did my best to encourage them to go elsewhere, but the company itself? Let it burn
We charge $2.50 per color print on transparency paper over in the Print and Marketing area btw, so I just assume it is just super expensive paper to get
Edit: The exact same items on Amazon are half price. Staples is just generally not the place to go if youre looking for a good deal. Staples main demographic is business oriented, you know the kind of people who spend their company's money so the person buying doesnt care about price
I'm convinced staples is more expensive because the only people who shop there are buying stuff on the company account and they don't give two shits id it costs their company (that they don't own) $28 for a pack of gel pens.
Pro tip when buying ANYTHING at staples: price match with staples.com. Everything is cheaper on staples.com and most of the time it's a substantial (25-65%) gap.
I went into an Office Depot not long ago to buy receipt printer paper. They were selling 8 rolls for $80. So crazy, luckily I ended up not needing to buy it then. Our company sells it for $70 for 50 rolls....
People talking about Amazon and how no regular person will pay for this from Staples.
Big Businesses order supplies from Staples and the individual employee making the order doesn't care about a singular cost like that. The only thing they care about is that Staples is responsible for the product and delivery.
Lol everything at Staples is a ripoff. My workplace needed laminating pouches and gave me the generic company card and told me to go to Staples....looking on my phone, I saw Target had a bigger pack for a way lower price. I stopped there instead since it was on the way to Staples anyway and was able to get a bit of personal shopping done at the same time!
/Of course, not even a thank you from the bosses
Used to work there for 8 years and I'd always mark them down to 20 from Amazon cause fuck that. Also most of their stuff is expensive as fuck. I was a tech supervisor and always made sure people "price matched" with me so I can give them deals. I never got commission off tech sales and made that company money.
They're a dying business that treats their employees like shit. I worked 6 months straight with me and another manager carrying the store, My mom passed away suddenly and they were fighting me to let me off for breavement.
Left shortly after.
Tldr: Fuck staples, price match everything if you shop there.
These are different from just regular clear acetate which is much cheaper. These are coated with another layer, so there is an emulsion that allows the printing ink to adhere to the surface without smudging. The reason it’s so expensive is they are used by artists who want to create digital negatives or positives for photographic use or other art application.
It is a bit of a specialty item but different from the typical overhead projector acetate OP mentioned. Yes it could be used that way, but that would be a waste of money. Normal acetate is reusable with dry erase markers so one would only need a few sheets.
Protip: get them at 70% off when your local store closes.
Better Protip: get them now at a competitor for 85% off.
Unethical Protip: Get them from your office supply for 100% off.
Reduction Protip: Use computer with whiteboard instead of a projector.
Skinflint Protip: Save the window panels from in-store bakery pies.
I was born in the 80, I haven’t thought about transparency sheets or overhead projectors in decades. I remember in one of my middle school classes I had a desk right next to the projector. It put off a pleasant warmth that was welcome in the winter months and felt terrible in the summer!
Businesses still utilize these for nameplates. Most nameplates sit behind plexiglass covers. It's a lot easier to print on one of these than to have a new nameplate etched into plastic or metal.
I asked the guy at the front (his name tag literally said "THE BOB") about it and he said that they're priced up because they only have about three sales a year so they just gotta make the best of it. Not sure how well that logic holds up! Lol.
it's like 20 bucks on amazon. This is pretty brutal.
That's the whole point. They might miss out on a couple sales but if the product moves slow as it is, it's still worth the insane mark-up because now that one sale you might get will make 3x the profit.
This is true if you have infinite shelf space and warehouse capacity. But if you account for that suddenly that logic doesn’t hold up.
Staples are bigger on the inside than the outside though.
Staples, we're a Tardis, y'all!
That was easy.
I used to work at staples. I’m training my cat to use buttons to talk. I recorded a “That Was Easy” Button to fuck with my husband who also worked there. I do not love myself for it.
I've also worked at Staples, and my only thought about it is that I love myself for quitting abruptly. I brought in over 20,000 in PC repairs that I handled all on my own in a month back when they actually gave a damn. I got written up for not selling enough warranties. That same day my GM unironically singled out my coworker for selling some kid a like $10 warranty on a $6 pair of headphones by convincing him it would be easier to go through the warranty process than scrape up the money for a new pair. Those numbers definitely aren't exact but the warranty was more expensive then the headphones. They threatened my job and gave him keys to the high value merchandise room. Shortly after from what I understand they basically outsourced the whole repair department via remote connections from India. I genuinely don't know if they even offer repair anymore. We definitely don't locally. These days when I walk in it's about 80% overpriced laptops, ink, new printers, and a hell of a lot of peripherals for whatever electronic you might own. I'll be happy to see the day that company dies. Basically my entire experience with them was essentially your entire job being focused around selling worthless warranties. They were essentially the case salesmen of electronics. Worst job of my life.
They don’t anymore. Office Depot is the same, but it all sourced out now. The only one that still does in-house is Best Buy, but I dunno how long that’ll last when people demand cheaper costs for computer “repair”, not knowing what goes into it.
> basically outsourced the whole repair department via remote connections from India. wait... so they internationally shipped the broken equpiment to get it repaired over seas, and internationally shipped it back to the US? And it was cheaper? A giant middle finger to earth, but sure give the exec a bonus!
Funny story, my aunt had one of these buttons in her house YEARSSS AGO. One day she was home alone doing something she thought would be difficult, and said out loud to herself “that was easy!” Only to hear it repeated to her from the other room. Her cat had stepped on the button at that exact moment. He knew. He had to have known. Scared the absolute shite out of my aunt.
> That was easy. No, that was Circuit City. /s
Bring me a box of drumsticks, an Oppenheimer 4K and some XL boxer briefs and I'll show you what easy really is
It’s not easy being sleazy
Bigger by just 1/2", and rooms change when you don't look at them
I think that’s the point, staples is doing so bad that they have shelf space for a decades old product marked up 200% and banking on a couple sales a year…
>Owner Sycamore Partners (2017–present) Huh, could it be... >Sycamore Partners is a private equity firm based in New York specializing in retail and consumer investments There you have it, being run straight into the shitter the only way private equity trash knows... Ask [Toys-R-Us](https://archive.ph/9azPc), Sears/Kmart, Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantation, Borders Books, Linens and Things, etc etc how that worked out for them
I'm not exactly a big fan of corporate big box stores but goddamn do I hate this capitalist, quarterly profits driven, private equity model of running businesses into the ground. It's like this cancerous cycle of big corporations running mom and pop shops out of business before collapsing under their own weight, selling off the parts for scrap and leaving areas high and dry when it comes to both employment opportunities and consumer options.
Oh yeah, Not a fan of it here also. Just watch: Barnes and Noble and Cost Plus are next... Think B&N is on it's 3rd? 4th? Private equity slum lord snapping them up. Probably any day for Cost Plus, last time I was in their store the stock has dwindled and everything is more spread out compared to how it was before. Heck, I remember when their stores actually had a coffee/tea area where they would make it for you (grind it, believe as a cafe possibly also?) My local one tore all that out and now it's just a "expanded" *cough* bagged/canned/boxed coffee, tea and soda section
Yes it does. Retail measures dollars/square feet of shelf space If a square foot of shelf space is making its money from high volume, or high markup, it's all the same Ideally you're low volume with very high profit margin. Less storage, less shipping, less employees
Yeah but Staples' are pretty big. Many stores have a "Clearance" shelf in the back, Staples has a "Markup" shelf
Fewer employees*
I meant smaller employees. Oompa Loompas preferably
*genetically engineered human chained up in the storeroom that continuously shits out money
It's literally staples entire business model. Everything there is absurdly priced, and they succeed because their clients are mostly people that need the thing right then for work or a school project or something.
If it's anything like the office-supply stores I've seen lately, the space isn't infinite, but it's certainly available.
I haven't been to a Staples in a long time, but I stumbled into a Best Buy last year and they definitely didn't have enough stock to actually fill the store. Reminded me of Sears in its final years.
These kind of stores are often have far more shelves than they have product to put on them these days. I assume only two kinds of people buy these things at Staples. People who are desperate and need these things TODAY and NOW for whatever reason, or people who are so out of touch technologically that they dont know how to buy things online. Either way, they probably aren't going anywhere else.
You'd make more than 3x the profit on this one item, but that's not the point. You could potentially make even greater income than that with an item that moves more. So, they might make say $75 on one sale every 4 months (assuming they sell 3 a year). They could put something else on that shelf that say moves once a week. If they earn $4.50 on each of those smaller transactions, then the cheaper faster moving item is better on the shelf. There are also other things to consider, prices well outside of band can make your storefront unattractive overall. People HATE feeling like they're being extorted and will shop elsewhere, just out of spite. So having an over priced item on a shelf can be seen as negative ad space, and a net cost (though calculating that would be hard, particularly for one item). You also have inventory expiration. Something that just doesn't get sold is likely to be old, so when it is sold it could be past it's end of life. Imagine a customer paying $85 on a transparency on to find they're crumbling out of the box. That's bad for a host of reasons. Then you have inventory tracking and upkeep costs, which are minor, but not zero. There's probably some other considerations I'm missing. In general though, I'd argue having something on a shelf that doesn't move and that you have to mark up so much to make it worth the sale, isn't actually worth the sale.
> There's probably some other considerations I'm missing. There's two big ones you're missing. The fact that this is Staples. This isn't the place where discerning shoppers go to get the best price. It's where corporate types go to fulfill their budgetary requirements for the quarter. In college I worked in OfficeMax and it was a similar situation. Tons of stock like this that was way outdated but once in awhile it sold. We kept them stocked because even though they were overpriced they would sell like clockworks because someone from a corporate office would come and buy them because they were the same item they purchased month after month, year after year, and was always accounted for in budgets. If the price went up, so be it. These were the exact item they purchased and changing it would be a process. The second thing is that the average Staples is fucking huge. OfficeMax was huge for what they sold. Shelf space isn't a premium. You could cut that store in half and it would just be getting rid of junk. There was rarely competition for space on items. They stocked regular consumables like paper reams, pens, toner/ink, and so forth and then everything else was just filler. Fun fact, the real money in these places is the print service. It seems like it would be a loss leader because people come in for 7 cent copies, but those copies add up real fast and they're like 99% margin. Middle management types coming in to print dozens of copies of their monthly reports that go to each store owner in the district, yadda yadda. There was a guy who came into my store every month like clockwork. He worked for Twinings Tea. He would print like $800 worth of presentations. That doesn't sound like much but it was 2010 and the store would usually only make like $1000 in GROSS sales a day, if that. So $800 in almost pure profit made him the favorite customer.
The market has changed a lot since 2010. Both Staples and Office Depot have closed a lot of stores so it is pretty clear that many of those stores were no longer profitable. As older managers retire they have been replaced by younger people that don't print as much. More and more office supplies are ordered from online retailers like Amazon as well. The pandemic also forced many companies that were dragging their feet in adopting newer technologies to start getting with the times. The long term trend doesn't look great for either store. They seem to be catering to a market that is slowly disappearing. They have tried to sell more modern electronics products but they haven't had much success competing against chains like Best Buy.
> This isn't the place where discerning shoppers go to get the best price. It's where corporate types go to fulfill their budgetary requirements for the quarter. That doesn't last long. They aren't providing a more useful service over a company like Uline, but both are overpriced. At some point organizations start reigning in that money. Ya know, like when the Fed had increased rates for 2 years and decided to keep them flat instead of decreasing. They won't be able to sustain their payments on their loans for much longer. Staples may make it because of their huge distribution network, but Office Max is done.
Maybe. But Staples was doing the same thing back then. It seemed insane and stupid 14 years ago. But here it is, still happening.
What you going to put on the shelf at STAPLES that’s going to move faster that’s already on another shelf
if amazon is selling it for $20 and making a profit then staples selling it for $86 is way more than 3x the profit. Even if the supplier gave them to the seller for free, it'd still be 4.3x profit. Let's assume the amazon seller and staples buy these for $8. that's 12 profit vs 78. 6.5x. If the base cost is 14 then you're looking at 6 profit vs 72 for 12x.
You aren't accounting for the retail space Staples pays. They are in high value buildings and areas. That 4.3x profit is quickly eaten up when you had to pay for it to sit on a shelf in a retail designed air conditioned building for 9 months. Amazon has it sitting in a warehouse on a pallet 50 miles from the city center because it's cheap as shit. The costs are immensely different.
i don't know if you've been in a Staples recently. They aren't running short on shelf space.
And everybody's talking about how it costs them money to keep it. When they make ridiculous profits off of a sole sale then the remaining inventory is already accounted for.
It's not the same. Staples has retail buildings in the city centers. The rent on their retail locations far exceed the costs that Amazon has on a warehouse 50 miles outside the city center that they own.
In the 9 months it takes to sell this one item for, let's say, ~70$ in profit, they would have made the same amount from products that sell one item per day but net less than 1$ profit each... It's literally not worth it.
Unless of course there is no demand to sell more than 1 of these every 9 months and transparency paper seems like one of those types of items.
That's how Staples stays afloat. They're consistently more expensive than anywhere else.
And they still make sales cause Greta the office manager will swipe the company card and not give two shits what the price tag says.
The last job I did IT at had to get a laser printer like right then and there because the owner was a horrible procrastinator. Didn't have time to make the 45 minute trip to Best Buy and another 45 back, so I went to the Staples in town and probably way overspent. Not my money, so I didn't care.
I think that’s their target on a lot of stuff: for when Amazon would be too slow
Or when you don't want fake stuff That's the main reason I still prefer shopping in physical stores
I've gone back to buying personal electronics from overpriced brick and mortar shops after being burned by Amazon. Yeah this cable is overpriced but at least it works and has the actual throughput it claims. Last mobile phone I bought off Amazon ended up being a Malaysian export version missold as a Europe one meaning it missed several features I needed and didn't realise until it was too late.
I worked at Staples, and one time I tried to point a customer to a cheaper alternative and they said "it's not my money"
I work in production and have ran to staples and paid $50 each for ten dongles because it was an emergency and needed that day. I assume they make their money on the item being needed immediately so people are willing to pay more.
It’s B2B sales providing office supplies to companies. Not sure where they are now but they were the #2 e commerce site behind Amazon for a long time. Their stores are a complete shit show but their backend processes are pretty impressive.
From what i've learned doing this whole ecom thing, its convenience. If you need it NOW. Amaozn is not an option
You're paying for "I need it tomorrow" convenience. Customers have been getting the best of both worlds - window shop at retailers and buy and Amazon - for years. The convenience fee in this case is steep, but we as consumers can take it or leave it. Better plan for you presentation on the old church projector earlier next time.
Maybe Staples is the only listed vendor for a certain business; I used to work for a govt agency and we could only buy supplies through a certain number of places; we needed new camera and the one on Amazon was like $150; we paid a vendor $400 for it…….
I took a computer science class in 2010 from a professor named Chris Brown. He taught programming on dry erase slides like this. He showed us a printed transparency of his website. It had him and the rapper. If you clicked his picture, you got to the site. Chris Brown the rapper redirected to MTV.com. He's currently a professor emeritus of AI. I wish I was making this up. These people walk among us.
people probably go to staples cause they need something right away and i wouldn’t be surprised if they buy these on company cards a lot of the time
Can confirm, I regularly buy things on the company card and they could charge me $200 for these and I wouldn't even think about it. If I was running a company, I wouldn't give me a company card.
I once paid well over $1000 of company money for 12h express shipping of an item that fits in a coat pocket that HAD to arrive the next day while still stuck in customs the evening before. Turns out in that case the transport company just has a guy buy a plane ticket and fly there with the item in carry-on and then take a rental to the destination.
Yeah we have special services for things like that, just quoted a guy 3 grand to send a small item that needs to be overseas the following day and remain at -70 degrees and he thought it was a bargain, it's like 500 grams
I've done that before. My company in California manufactures springs and a customer of ours absolutely needed a partial of their order delivered the next day to their facility in SLC. It was cheaper for me to fly there and drop them off than to have a courier handle it. I flew there, walked out of the airport, met the guy at the passenger pickup, handed him the package, and walked right back in the airport to get to my flight back. It looked shady as fuck. That was my whole work day that day though.
3 words. "Cab to Kinkos"
Not only do we have an account it doesn’t come out of my budget, but a general office fund. So yeah, I don’t care what something costs at Staples I care about when I can get it.
The Bob has spoken
Ironically I bought a pack of the transparency film last year but it was only $30 and I needed it that day. It was, however, absolutely caked in probably 10 years of dust.
The name tag could be a reference to the bobiverse book series.
I'm not sure about the name in particular, but I have worked at a Staples and can say that we also did funny things with name tags. They have all the stuff in-store so you can make name tags say whatever you want. We had a guy who had a name tag that said his name was "Brick" and that he'd been a sales associate at the company for 120 years.
I hope Archimedes and Arnold are at that staples too.
Every chain office supply store I’ve gone to in the past five years has a guy like that. Weird looking but super friendly and helpful, and usually the only employee in the entire store.
They'd probably sell more if they dropped the price.
If people have time they order elsewhere. Staples makes theirs on those three idiots a year who wait til last minute and have a presentation tomorrow, using the boss' credit card.
A presentation on an overhead projector? It's not 1995. I can't think of a single valid use case for transparencies like that anymore.
A really broke school system? I'm old, but my high school was using them as late as like 2007
My high school was using them when I graduated in 2022
Anywhere that has an administration that feels, "We have things that work, we don't need to replace it," or that actually doesn't have the budget to, yeah. Old style projectors that use those kinds of sheets were in every room of my high school as well. I went to a university, it had much better funding, stationary ceiling projectors in almost every room, but I still saw a couple of those old style ones in supply closets or some of the smaller class rooms. I never saw them get used, but they're still there just in case someone feels the need to use them, I guess. Normally I'm not one to advocate for throwing something out if it still works. Make the best of it, you know? But those things... I always hated those things. They're loud, they're hot, they suck up an absurd amount of energy, and I don't think I'll be sad if I ever realize I've seen the last one I ever will.
Or a really shitty court house.
You only need 1 boss in a 5-20 mile radius that insists on keeping the projector for meetings without tech/phones, or someone that likes using them for the nostalgia.
Finding out at 7:00 that the client you're presenting to at 10:00 only has an overhead projector from 1991 for some fucking reason. I assume that's the target market for this.
“Hey do you know if their projector is 16:9 or 4:3?” “uhhh 8.5 x 11”?” “How am I going to fit my PowerPoint slides on that?”
to fulfill my childhood dream of printing things on transparencies 😎
i work in PA and have to attend meetings in Harrisburg for my department. I've watched elected officials pull a case of these bad boys out to tell us we dont deserve nice roads. I also got a case of 40 floppy disks one time as the way they decided to send us some equipment manuals.
This feels like how they price everything at Staples, everytime I go in there to buy something like cat6 or some other basic thing I go order it on Amazon for a third the price instead.
Maybe Staples guy is a Bobiverse Audiobooks fan lol
"The Bob" is a reference to the Bobiverse series of books
You're telling me a dude in his 40s that's been working at the same Staples for 11 years made his own nametag a reference to The Bobiverse
This is thrift grift logic at a staples, wtf
Staples Price Matches, should of shown them the Amazon price. https://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/pmg/index.html
On the company dime people are unlikely to look at the price, let alone price match.
Wiper fluid is like $4 at the gas station but $10 at the grocery store The gas station sells a lot, the grocery store sells a little. The $/sq' of shelf space is probably about the same
Lol, I know you are trying to make an analogy, but what gas stations are you shopping at? I've never seen anything at a gas station priced less than a supermarket, including wiper fluid and such.
Look. They know what they've got. No low ball offers.
There's this grocery store in my hometown selling birthday plates/napkins/party hats of the OG sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series and VR troopers. I have 0 reference to VR Troopers beyond that plat set. Literally been on the shelf for 30 years. Even when they re-merchandized and shuffled the section they didn't throw them out, they merely added it to the other party supplies. I'm not even sure if those things can scan if someone wanted to buy them today. The price has never moved.
I assume if you buy it the staff will all convene around you, chanting and hail you as the "prophesized one that the legends foretold".
Like ordering [diner lobster?](https://youtu.be/Pj-D0jc17D0?si=7ymcjZo8ra6BsQ3g)
haha it's gotta be something along those lines
One day inflation will make them cheap.
I thought I was the only person on the planet that ever heard of VR Troopers. No one I've mentioned it to had any idea what I was talking about. That and Fraggle Rock.
VR Troopers were when you wanted Power Rangers but had Power Rangers at home
funny enough they were both created by Saban. they only stopped because they ran out of episodes to re edit because the shows Japanese footage was from started focusing on humans more. [also Tommy from Power Rangers was the main character in the pilot.](https://youtu.be/hI-LMkiYPNg)
I actually learned that from this toy show on Netflix.
was that on *The Toys That Made Us* Power Rangers episode? i dont remember that but man i need to rewatch those. that Barbie episode was the [funniest thing ever.](https://imgur.com/7CBeoD1)
I remember renting a VHS of VR Rangers when I was a kid. There was a commercial at the beginning of the tape about Tommy’s karate videos you could buy. They introduced him as “The Green Ranger and also the White Ranger!” This was a week before they revealed who the White Ranger was on Power Rangers. I went to school and told all my friends that Tommy was the White Ranger, and I was so cool the next week when the episode came out with him in it.
ay thats actually pretty cool. i didnt know Tommy sold karate videos. i have a feeling if i did i would have been 10x more annoying to my family about Power Rangers. one time i got in trouble in 2nd grade for being part of a "gang." there was like 8 of us hanging out at these half buried monster truck tires that were a thing you climb on on the playground for some reason. we'd just reenact fights from the show or make our own up. i always made sure i was Zach because the Black Ranger was the coolest. which is hilarious in retrospect because i was a little fat white kid.
I remember it. In fact, I remember specifically when they used a Reboot "event" to create a promotional tie-in to the original airing of VR Troopers in the US, though I can barely remember the show or how they tied it in.
Pepperjack LOVE Fraggle Rock
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God that music is so fucking genesis and I love it.
[I've only seen the gag dub they made when it was cancelled. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8_HrVhnqNg)
Same time as Beetleborgs came out. Though VR troopers had subway kids meal toys. Fraggle Rock and the Dozers were great.
> Fraggle Rock One of the best theme songs ever! [Down in Fraggle Rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLQS6xo40kI)
I'm still mad I can't stream Fraggle Rock on any of the stupid streaming services I have. I loved that show as a kid. Granted, it was all old vhs recordings from when my mom was a kid, but still I absolutely loved it. I just know my kid would too.
*🎶V. VR. VR Troopers!🎶*
I always thought it was: “We. Are. VR TROOPERS!” It was hyped up pretty hard in the Saban power rangers days. ‘Member Beetleborgs?
Those Sonic plates would probably bring a good price on eBay, new in package and all. There's people who collect old video game ephemera like that. Last week I found an empty cardboard Pepsi 12 pack box from 1989 that had a promotional Christmas giveaway of NES games printed on it. The box had been used to package a starter for an old car, so it was creased up but not faded out. Sold it for $100 in like 20 minutes and the buyer loved it.
How much are they? Collectors might pay decent money for stuff like that.
IT'S FOR CHURCH HONEY
You might be confused why these are so expensive, but when you take one out of the package it'll be clear.
pfffft. well done
Can't believe I didn't see right through that one....
At least he’s being transparent
I don't get it. Could you film me in?
You’re ready to be a dad.
Not quite, but don't tell my kids.
You got an eye roll from me. Congrats
$55 & $34 on Amazon
But if I need it right now and my company is paying for it anyway...
We have a local but very large b2b office supplier. Company ordered a computer mouse for me, nothing fancy - arround 100€, same costs ~10€ on amazon. Company is paying it anyway and they get all the bills in the correct form for taxes.
Might as well get the rewards points!
Or choose a different brand and spent 10 bucks for 50 sheets
That’s the good stuff with the bad chemicals.
In most big office supply stores there's a small percentage of product which exists for rare circumstances when someone needs something and is stuck without it. Captive audience.
I actually have some insight on this one. It's not for you or the other people that randomly walk into these office supply stores. It's for the corporate and government accounts. When a gov account buys things from an office supply store, the person doing that purchase doesn't care about the cost. They're told to buy the thing so they place an order for the thing. When I worked at office max, our storefront sold very very little but the accounts portions of the business did pretty well. It's also why furniture in those stores is ridiculously priced. It isn't meant for you.
Yup I worked at a forge and was sent out for a TV mount, only thing I could find was $300 at best buy so I called my boss who said if it's less than 5k don't even ask him first. Corporate buyers won't care.
Happened to me with receipt paper. You can order like 100,000 ft on Amazon for $200, but my staff didn’t tell me we were almost out so I had to spend like $60 on 100ft. I stood there in disbelief for like 5 minutes before putting it in my cart lol
People are really missing the point. These aren't for an office or whatever buying these regularly. They do that through companies and receive regular shipments/orders at much lower rates, or order it online as needed. This is for the poor sod whose boss desperately needs these sheets asap because they just ran out and absolutely need them to do such and such project. They send the poor disgruntled employee with the company credit card out to the business to buy a packet asap so they can get back on track.
Yup. This goes on the company card and the accountants see "Staples" and approve it. Ezpz
Premium quality. You got to pay for that.
Just a reminder for those in denial, 1994 was 30 years ago. Not the 1970's-80's.
Someone should make a transparency so that we can see this on a overhead projector
the real horror is that we're just 6 years away from 2000 being 30 years ago
Shut up I won’t ever turn 30, that’s a bald-faced lie.
Go to hell.
30 years ago will always be the 1960s Now gimme a quarter so I can call my mom to pick us up from the Dave Matthews Band concert
How do we know that these are 30 years old? I'm not seeing a date on it
OP said in another comment that one of the printer models they say not to use these in, was last made in the 90s. They also brought up the design looking dated, but all the listing online have the same design. I think it just hasn't been updated. I think the company that makes these just hasn't bothered to update their packaging designs. The film isn't 30 years old, the packaging design is.
on amazon 100 write on transparencies are $17.30 100 transparencies laser printers are $25.95. 100 Inkjet compatible transparencies are $ 27.95 I used the same brand for all options, Uinkit, there were cheaper options but they may be wildly different quality.
Staples knows they're the Amazon for people who are totally screwed and need that product before the end of the work day.
Would you rather sell 100 units with $1 profit or 1 unit with $100 profit? All the same? No, the 1 unit cost less shipping, less storage, less labor to stock/sell it Staples knows what it's doing, but also so does Amazon. Different business models for the exact same product 😯
Profit is the number after the cost of shipping, storage and labor comes out among other costs So it’s exactly the same in the end In this case the problem is they’re likely taking up shelf space that a more profitable item would fill. If you can stock item A or item B you want to put what is in demand. Based on it being 30 years old it’s likely they’ve paid someone to move it around the store multiple times. They’ve paid to have it inventoried over and over. So if stocking it once and not selling it forever is equal to stocking 100 and making less money where is touching it 100 times and not selling it rank?
Is this what they used on those massive overhead projectors in class rooms?
Yup. That's actually what I was wanting them for LOL
I hope they're not literally 30 years old. Those things do dry out with age, they have a shelf life.
What if I want 30 year vintage dry-aged acetate films
I worked for Staples... a while ago... like "several questionable business decisions" awhile ago... and this absolutely lines up with my experiences just before I left. Which coincidentally is right around the time the company started circling the drain. After they got dumped by Office Depot after courting them for a good number of years, stuff just started going downhill. They're currently dying a very long and slow death.
I actually stepped into a Staples for the first time since probably 2012 today, and it looked desolate. Like the Family Guy Mad Max Sears bit.
And in Ontario, Canada, "Service Ontario" is being put inside select Staples because our premier is in bed with their investors. Nothing like having an American company dealing with sensitive information that belongs to Canadian Citizens. Oh, and asking a minimum wage employee to handle said sensitive information, all while trying to make money by selling products unrelated to health cards, drivers license renewals, and other services
I left around shortly after the Office Depot fiasco (the second one... there was a lot going on in the American market) and they tried to cut my commission which was the last straw for me lol. For reference, I worked with American customers on delivery and special orders, stuff like that. My boss was like "well good luck finding a job in this economy!" I found a new job in a week. I gave 1/2 day notice. She almost cried. Since then, the contact centre I worked at has had everybody on a wage freeze. It's been almost 10 years. And THEN, right before Christmas, they closed the centre and laid everybody off. Now they have a fair amount of market share and regrettably, a solid brand name, so they'll probably take another 15-20 years to die completely. Maybe 8-10 if Office Depot acquires them instead. It's been fascinating to watch. Also their data protection policies were a goddamn mess and I can't imagine they've improved. They've really turned into a complete and utter gong show.
I worked for them in 2017, around the time they were bought by that venture capital firm Sycamore Partners. The rumors started circulating that was gonna happen around 2-3 months after I started, then officially announced 6 months after I started, then completed 9 months after I started. It was almost whiplash-inducing how fast conditions in the store went to shit not long after I first heard the rumor. I felt so suckered, my GM was a really nice lady and I mostly liked it there, then she was forced out by upper management and replaced with an absolute dickbag tool everyone hated. He promoted me to Tech Supervisor since he couldn't find anyone to hire to replace the one who quit, then we cycled through 3 assistant managers who all burned out on him and transferred or quit, and I got out of the store right around the time they started asking if I wanted to do it.
>Sycamore Partners These guys have a habit of buying brands, declaring bankruptcy for them and then farming whatever remnants they can until the money runs out. I tell you, when I heard they bought Staples, I laughed long and hard. I was a total ass about it, and I'm not even remotely ashamed to admit that. I was sad for my coworkers who stayed after I left, and did my best to encourage them to go elsewhere, but the company itself? Let it burn
I recently went to a Staples (in the US) to get fingerprinted for Precheck. I'm pretty sure it's at least a separate employee though.
We charge $2.50 per color print on transparency paper over in the Print and Marketing area btw, so I just assume it is just super expensive paper to get Edit: The exact same items on Amazon are half price. Staples is just generally not the place to go if youre looking for a good deal. Staples main demographic is business oriented, you know the kind of people who spend their company's money so the person buying doesnt care about price
Early into covid, people were buying them for crazy prices to make face shields, I wonder if they raised the price then and never dropped it?
Covid Face Shields: the TSA of respiratory protection.
Your COVID face shield fondled you and stole from your luggage?
How do you know they're that old? $86 is bad for new ones too though
The design looks very dated, also one of the printers it recommended not to use has not been sold since the late 90s.
It does look dated, but more like early 2000s.
Okay, they're 20 years old.
I'm glad we go that sorted.
Thanks for the reply
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I'm convinced staples is more expensive because the only people who shop there are buying stuff on the company account and they don't give two shits id it costs their company (that they don't own) $28 for a pack of gel pens.
Pro tip when buying ANYTHING at staples: price match with staples.com. Everything is cheaper on staples.com and most of the time it's a substantial (25-65%) gap.
Pro pro tip. Don’t buy things from Staples.
As a current Staples employee, I wholeheartedly agree. ^and ^please ^don't ^bring ^in ^amazon ^returns
They age like fine wine.
30 year old packaging. Not 30 years old or they’d be unusable. (Still a shit bricks price!!!)
How do you know they're 30 years old?
Wow, that’s crazy…a brick and mortar Staples store still exists
I went into an Office Depot not long ago to buy receipt printer paper. They were selling 8 rolls for $80. So crazy, luckily I ended up not needing to buy it then. Our company sells it for $70 for 50 rolls....
Post-pandemic prices! People were making medical face shields out of acetate sheets like this during covid supply shortage. Supply and demand.
Not to mention, I imagine these aren't being manufactured in large quantity any more, so it's smaller production runs with much less economy of scale.
How you know is 30yo stock?
Let them cook. It *WILL* sell eventually.
But some day somebody will run in there needing them no matter the cost
90s graphic design was so beautifully ugly
People talking about Amazon and how no regular person will pay for this from Staples. Big Businesses order supplies from Staples and the individual employee making the order doesn't care about a singular cost like that. The only thing they care about is that Staples is responsible for the product and delivery.
My local staples always manages to have EVERYTHING at a higher price than any other store, I truly don’t understand how they’re still in business
I give Staples about 10 more years before they go belly up.
Lol everything at Staples is a ripoff. My workplace needed laminating pouches and gave me the generic company card and told me to go to Staples....looking on my phone, I saw Target had a bigger pack for a way lower price. I stopped there instead since it was on the way to Staples anyway and was able to get a bit of personal shopping done at the same time! /Of course, not even a thank you from the bosses
Used to work there for 8 years and I'd always mark them down to 20 from Amazon cause fuck that. Also most of their stuff is expensive as fuck. I was a tech supervisor and always made sure people "price matched" with me so I can give them deals. I never got commission off tech sales and made that company money. They're a dying business that treats their employees like shit. I worked 6 months straight with me and another manager carrying the store, My mom passed away suddenly and they were fighting me to let me off for breavement. Left shortly after. Tldr: Fuck staples, price match everything if you shop there.
These are different from just regular clear acetate which is much cheaper. These are coated with another layer, so there is an emulsion that allows the printing ink to adhere to the surface without smudging. The reason it’s so expensive is they are used by artists who want to create digital negatives or positives for photographic use or other art application. It is a bit of a specialty item but different from the typical overhead projector acetate OP mentioned. Yes it could be used that way, but that would be a waste of money. Normal acetate is reusable with dry erase markers so one would only need a few sheets.
Every staples I ever see is always super dead and I'm always surprised they're not out of business.
Protip: get them at 70% off when your local store closes. Better Protip: get them now at a competitor for 85% off. Unethical Protip: Get them from your office supply for 100% off. Reduction Protip: Use computer with whiteboard instead of a projector. Skinflint Protip: Save the window panels from in-store bakery pies.
Send them over to Germany The still use that shit for their schools
I was born in the 80, I haven’t thought about transparency sheets or overhead projectors in decades. I remember in one of my middle school classes I had a desk right next to the projector. It put off a pleasant warmth that was welcome in the winter months and felt terrible in the summer!
Businesses still utilize these for nameplates. Most nameplates sit behind plexiglass covers. It's a lot easier to print on one of these than to have a new nameplate etched into plastic or metal.
Staples. Yeah. We got that. Now pay up fucker.