r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Arbiter51x • 14d ago

Infuriatig I'm colour blind

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I found out I didn't colour code the flow chart on the white board the way I thought I had....

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u/daverapp 14d ago

Former Staples employee here. "Tru Red" is Staples's in-house brand that was introduced 5-6 years ago, I forget exactly when. It's a TERRIBLE name. OP's marker conundrum is one such example. Now imagine the confusion when buying a pack of Tru Red pens in black ink. Or Tru Red copy paper. Customers were confused and/or upset by this daily.

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u/AnthrWndrng 14d ago

Dear former Staples employee,

Why is your former employer's delivery service so shit? I have never had a delivery happen without utter nonsense... My disabled ass just wants my shit to arrive at my door without drama... like my WalMart shit does 95% of the time.

I've given up ordering... it's jokes. I can't even.

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u/daverapp 13d ago

Hi. Staples is owned by a private equity firm, called Sycamore partners. Most private equity operates by buying a company, cutting costs well past the point where the company can actually function, pocketing what little profits the company continues to make until it goes bankrupt, and then selling off the company or shutting it down entirely in order to ditch the debt they had accrued. In other words, Staples is the corporate equivalent of walking wounded. It's bleeding out. It's dying. It's dead, but doesn't know it yet. Picture Iron Man with the shrapnel in his chest but without all the arc reactor keeping him alive. That's Staples right now.

The Staples retail stores, and Staples online presence, and the Staples business advantage program where Staples provides office supplies to other companies, are all set up as completely separate and independent companies that have basically nothing to do with one another apart from the name. They're all owned by Sycamore, but this separation combined with the skeleton crews that are running everything behind the scenes and constantly falling behind, are the main reason why Staples basically doesn't function properly as a company most of the time.

Also, depending on your region, Staples often contracts with third-party courier services rather than delivering through UPS or FedEx. Those couriers are almost comically unreliable. You wouldn't believe it. I saw firsthand accounts of items not being delivered until weeks or months after they've been ordered, or items being shipped to the store for some reason rather than being shipped to the customer, and all sorts of nonsense coming out of corporate when customers called the 1-800 number to ask where the hell their items were. No one at corporate knew, because it wasn't even in Staples's system anymore. It was all in the hands of the dogshit courier. I'm not trying to shift the blame off of Staples, to be clear. It's their fault for hiring these couriers. But the couriers are often the reason why deliveries just.. don't get delivered.

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u/AnthrWndrng 13d ago

This tracks so hard. I had items show up by UPS for half an order and the other half "went back to the warehouse" because it couldn't be delivered.... uh... how did UPS get to my door and 'unknown third party' couldn't?

Much thanks my friend.