Getting the Picture: Part 1

Getting the Picture: Part 1
by Martell

My wife and I are planning on buying a home picture-printing apparatus. We're really looking forward to being able to print out any pictures we want without having to go to a photo lab or drug store. Even though drug store prints are generally only 29¢ apiece, while a photo printer costs anywhere from $150 to $500 (not including extra printer ribbons and photo paper), we still think this is an important investment.

Okay, technically it's just me that thinks this is an important investment. My wife is presently satisfied with going to the local Rite Aid whenever we need prints, which is only every six months or so. I must admit this makes perfect sense, especially when you consider that we barely even use our camera. Maybe that's just because we always forget to bring our camera with us. Or maybe it's because the thing goes through power like it was competing for some bizarre modern-day battery eating championship. Whatever the reason, we only take about six new photos a year, which makes one wonder why I want this equipment so badly.

Three days ago, buying a picture printer was the furthest thing from my mind. Sure, I had seen the cool HP commercials, but there was nothing there to move me from simple awareness to actual purchase intent. Enter Sav-On, and Rite Aid, and Longs/Rexall Drugs. Forget the pricey ad campaign; little did the home picture printer industry know that their chief competitors were about to become their #1 salesmen.

Over the past couple of weeks, my wife had been working on a project that required two photos of herself. We had a bunch of shots already on the memory card, but we took a few more this past Saturday, and then picked the ones we liked the most. Since she had to work on Sunday, it was left in my hands to get the two photos printed. No problem!

With only one early football game that Sunday, I decided to jump out at halftime to get this taken care of early. I headed down the street to the local Sav-On, which is about six blocks away. Like most drug stores nowadays, this Sav-On has one of those Kodak do-it-yourself digital printing stations. I started surfing through the instructions, but I couldn't find any option to print single photos, unless I wanted 8 x 10s. Everything was photo packages or Christmas cards. This seemed kind of weird to me, but I thought I had looked through the options pretty thoroughly. I surfed around a little bit more, but no luck. Since all I needed was a couple of 4 x 6s (and I didn't feel like shelling out the $4.00 per print), I decided to try another store.

The next closest place was Rite Aid, which is about a mile from my house, though not in the same direction as the Sav-On I was at. I wove my way across town and went inside. Of course, they had the exact same machine as the last place. Great. But as I was about to walk out, I noticed a sign that said, “Single Prints, 29¢.” Rather than ask the attendant for some help, I decided just to try the machine again on my own. I'm not sure what was different about this machine, but I found the “single photos” option almost immediately. After a lot of trial an error—including learning how to override the machine's auto-crop function—I finally was able to place my order. Out comes my receipt, and I ask the attendant if I need to do anything else. She gives me an envelope to fill out and comes around the counter to finalize the order, after which she informs me the pictures will be ready in about an hour. I decide to head home to catch the Chargers/Buccaneers game.

Four hours and one Chargers victory later, I still hadn't received a phone call from Rite Aid. But, since the woman didn't explicitly state that she would call me when the pictures were ready, I decided to head over there anyway. Plus, my wife was scheduled to get home in a couple of hours, so I needed to get this done now.

There was now a new person working at the photo counter—a guy—and he started to help me. “Hi, can I help you?” “Yes, I have some pictures...” Blah blah blah. So he looks my name up in the system and says, “Hmm.” I don't know, maybe it was due to my incredible people-reading skills, but for some strange reason I knew immediately that this was not good news. He asked for my receipt, typed in the confirmation code, said “Hmm” again, started to look through the picture bin, asked for my last name again, looked through the bin some more, put the bin away, and started to search the counter area. He then asked me, “Are you sure the lady that was here earlier processed your order?” I told him that I was sure that she walked around the counter and typed some things into the machine, but that I didn't actually supervise her work. He came around the counter, typed some things into the machine—I didn't supervise his work either—and informed me that I was not in the system. Yeah, no kidding, I think I had figured that out already.

The guy then heads back behind the counter and starts looking through a stack of envelopes on the printing machine, where—lo and behold!—he finds an empty envelope with my name on it. He goes and gets his manager, who comes over and goes through the exact same process with me again (except for the finding the envelope part). I guess I should have appreciated his thoroughness, but at this point I was starting to get a little annoyed. Perhaps sensing this, he offered to process my order again, free of charge (the receipt I had was not for payment; it was just an order confirmation). I guess this was a nice gesture, even if it was only worth 48¢ plus tax, but it was lost on me. See, I had made this trip to Rite Aid to pick up photos, not to print them, so I didn't bring my memory card with me. Still quite annoyed, I headed back home.

When I got home, I decided that I needed to find another drug store. In looking back, I'm not really sure how I came to that conclusion; by some sort of twisted logic, it made sense to me at the time. Did I really think that, if I went right back to the same store, they would let the same mistake happen again? Wouldn't they actually print them right away, while I was still there, to make sure I was satisfied? Plus, they were going to be free. For some unknown reason, all of this escaped me, and I found the next closest Rite Aid and headed out. Little did I know what this momentary lapse of reason would lead to...

To be continued...

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.