FOP: Ever closer to Home

Our story so far:

My printer, the one I bought less than a year ago, needs a new "drum." As far as I can determine, the drum is the removable cradle that the toner cartridge sits in.

Sigh.

So, off to Office Depot, where I bought the thing, and where I regularly buy the $75 toner cartridges. My spending on toner cartridges by now dwarfs the original cost of the printer. But it's a good printer-copier-scanner; prints very rapidly, and so forth.

Oops. I can't seem to find the drum, even though I see lots of drums for other Brother printers. After a bit, a helpful young man joins me. He verifies that they have no drum. So, of course, I ask if he can order me one, call me when it comes in.

"Just step over here with me," he says, and I comply, assuming he wants to write down my phone number and maybe the number of the drum I need.

But no. He proceeds to go to the Office Depot website and order the drum, from start to finish, all the dreary pages finding the right item, entering the product number on another screen, selecting the type of payment --he clicks "pay at register"-- and then he needs all my information. How did I learn about the website, for crying out loud. My address, etc.

By this time I am getting antsy, and irritated. He selects "send," and tells me it'll probably arrive at my house on Monday.

"No. I want to pick it up here. I wanted you to order it, and call me when it came in. Why all this stuff?"

"We can't do that. We don't stock it."

"So what? Get one for me. And, by the way, I bought the damn printer here; you stock that. And I have a new toner cartridge under my arm, here. You stock that."

"We don't stock that drum. We'd have to change our whole order series if we wanted to start stocking that drum. And we can't just order it. They'd charge us for it." This brings me up short, for a sec.

Whatever. We proceed to the register, where I will buy my cartridge. He's carrying paperwork. When we get to the register, he rings up two sales: one for the toner I am taking with me, and one for the $110 drum I have ordered --and for which I now must pay in advance. And he's called a manager, because to change my e-order so the drum will be sent to the store, he needs a manager. They can't change the shipping address, and I tell them that, regardless of when anyone tells me it'll be delivered, it won't. And when it is delivered, I won't be home to get it.

But I am intrigued, even as I am getting pissed off. So I ask the manager, is this really just a franchise?

"No. Officer Depot owns and operates this store."

"Then what's all this about them charging you if you order it? And who cares if they do? You obviously have a market for the drums, as I can promise you, the ones that come with the machine don't last a year."

Well, it turns out that an intercompany charge is apparently just as bad as employee embezzlement, or storm damage, or something. They must floor-plan these stores like the carmakers do the dealers. If you want something they don't have, it's to the internet.

Now, you can't pick up a news magazine these days without finding a piece on how Amazon and other virtual stores that run out of faceless fulfillment houses scattered in godforsaken rural sinks of depression around the country are bankrupting the retail stores of America. So what do the retail stores do, to save themselves and their local-merchant friendliness and personal service? Why, they operate exactly like Amazon does, except that you order on their computers instead of your own.

In the film that gave this blog its name, there is a scene where George Clooney is standing at the counter of a country general store, in need of a fan belt for his (stolen) flivver. Turns out it'll take two weeks for the fan belt to be delivered. Clooney says, "Two weeks! That don't do me no good."

In frustration, thinking, he says, offhand, that he wants some hair pomade. The storekeeper turns to a high shelf and comes back with a can of Fop.

"I don't want Fop, goddammit," Clooney expostulates. "I'm a Dapper Dan man."

"Watch your language, young feller; this is a public establishment. I can get you Dapper Dan. Take two weeks."  (You can tell I'm having fun, here.)

Clooney explodes. "Two weeks! Why, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!"

Like George, I don't want Fop. And I don't go to a store expecting that it's actually a big walk-in computer terminal. But, apparently, that is our future.

And it's Fop. And I don't want it.