I’m rarely kind to Office Max. They fill a nice need I often have as a consumer, but they’re often idiots. My latest trip was no exception.
I needed a new roll of labels for my labelmaker. I’ve become a big fan of GTD (started a new blog about it, and love using Nozbe) and so I’ve been working on getting my files organized. My first roll of labels was about gone, so I stopped by Office Max while I was out. I had forgotten to write down the model number of my labelmaker before I went in, but I thought I could figure it out.
When I got to their labelmaker section, they didn’t carry mine (of course), but they had spare labels that I thought would work. I pulled out my iPhone, found my labelmaker in it, and checked to see if they were compatible. Based on the website and the box I thought they were, but I wasn’t positive, so I found an employee to help.
I showed him the phone and the box and asked what he thought, and he was stunned by the phone. “What IS that? It’s so cool! Is that a BlackBerry or something?”
I was kind of floored. This is a first-gen iPhone — certainly nothing special — and this is a technology-based store. How on earth could a late-20′s employee not recognize an iPhone? I don’t expect them to know every model of phone off the top of their head, especially considering they don’t sell them, but how can an Office Max employee be that out of touch with today’s technology?
I dunno, it just seemed very very odd to me…
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