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Everybody Knows Your Name
Kinkos sucks and their customer service sucks but everyone goes there anyway.
Because you”re running late for a workshop or a meeting and you need to quick copy some sides or a bit of your screenplay. And the mom-and-pop print shop closes at 6 PM, which doesn”t do anything for you.
At all.
You slide your debit card in and get ”er going”¦ Then the machine skips pages, runs out of paper, jams, eats your hand”¦
But you don”t have time to complain about it because you”re on a mission to save the world one story at a time. You get even more overcharged trying to correct the problem by printing more pages.
Now you”ll never make it to Starbucks on the way.
The world is ending.
Last night I needed four copies of a 140 page manuscript in a hurry, so I wasn”t taking any chances.
Instead of my usual mad copy dash, I asked the Sr. staff member behind the main counter, the one I see every week, to help me with self-printing my pages.
His nametag said Jack Langsten. And he helped me.
He showed me which machine he trusted most, gave me tips on avoiding paper jams and told me he”d look after me to see when I was ready for the next step. Left alone, I watched people come and go at the copiers beside me. I met many of them. (Having a script in hand will do that for you.)
“Did you write this yourself, Miss Stover?” Mr. Langsten asked, after we had spent about thirty minutes copying and hole punching and bracketing to perfection.
I see him every week, but I have never talked to him. His station is usually swarmed--
“Yes, Mr. Langsten, I did.”
“Smart and talented,” he said with a country-time wink.
All the while actors printing resumes came and went calling out, “Hey Jack!”
“I”ll fight you for him,” I said.
And he laughed, “I”m popular.”
He is. And for an hour, he made me The Queen of Kinkos.
Today, while driving, I thought about my Kinkos adventures and Mr. Langsten and realized that his first and last names are two of the exact first names of characters from my screenplay.
Which doesn't mean anything.
Except that my life is pure magic.
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