Picket Fence Post

Dear Teenaged Staples Employees with Whom I Spoke Yesterday,

You were all so very pleasant yesterday when I asked several of you where I could locate Trapper Keepers in your store.

Clutching three sets of school supply lists for my three kids (for items which ultimately cost me $130 . . . and I didn’t buy everything on the lists and made many unauthorized substitutions with store brands) I must’ve looked like a crazy lady to whom you gave quizzical looks. Was my scary/stressed out demeanor the reason why, when I asked, “Where are your Trapper Keepers?” you kept showing me intricate $20 zippered contraptions which were clearly meant for high school or higher-level students? Or were you just not in the mood to deal with me?

“No, that cannot possibly be what the teacher wants,” I said, pointing to one of the lists. “This if for a fourth grader.”

When I continued to get nothing but vacant looks, I dashed back to your humongous school supply display, grabbed a two-pocket folder WITHOUT fasteners (per teachers’ requests) and held it up to an employee. “See? This says ‘Trapper’ on it. That means that somewhere, there’s a Trapper Keeper for this to go into.”

More blankness. “Sorry,” one kind young girl said with a smile, returning to her work of stacking merchandise.

I received similar responses from other staffers whose glances bestowed unspoken pity upon me, the poor woman who, minutes earlier, had been muttering to her fourth grade son, “The teacher’s just gonna have to deal with these substitutions . . . HOW many of those? Ten? No way.”

Then, after 45 migraine-inducing minutes of trying to locate the nearly 40 items on the three lists (not including the ones I didn’t buy), I accidentally stumbled across a small Mead display. With Trapper Keepers. For $6.99. I brought a light blue Trapper Keeper to the front of the store where the nice young girl was still stacking the $20 zippered items and said, “I just thought you should know, THIS is a Trapper Keeper. It’s at the end of Aisle 3, in case any other parents come in here looking for it.”

In the future, perhaps you kind, polite and smiling young folks could put in a little effort into discerning if your store actually carries an item for which an already frazzled parent, clutching a vast school supply list, is looking instead of just providing blank stares.

Happy Fall!

Sincerely,

Meredith O’Brien

Image credit: Ironically, from Office Depot.