My Tirade Against the Establishment

So, the other day I was trying to get my thesis printed out on the required 25% cotton, 20 or 24 lb, white paper. I thought, hey this is a university requirment so the university copy shop should be the place to go. Many students need to print out thesis and dissertations on that type of paper; it should logically follow that the university copy shop would be equipped to provide this needed service for the thier students. Sounds logical, right? This is apparently NOT the case. You can't even print from a usb drive. A total and utter dissapointment. So then I thought, the next best thing would be to find a name brand copy shop (the one that starts with a K) and it turns out that the closest one is about 30 minutes away. There I was able to rent computer time, at a per minute charge, and send my items to a printer. After making the last minute changes and triple checking that everything was in order I sent my pages to the printer, at the low low price of .50 a page (EEKS). I go to collect my pages and take them to the counter so that I can get the copied on the special cotton paper. Sorry, they can't make copies for me today, it will take them until 8pm, or sometime tomorrow. I can however, purchase the special cotton paper (which is actually 100% cotton and not 25%, but whatever) and make the copies myself. I thought that was the next best solution and proceeded to count pages to know how many sheets to buy, when I noticed that almost all of my pages had printed out slightly askew. Some pages were more than slighlty askew, with almost an inch difference from top to bottom. The univeristy has no tolorence for skewed pages, so I asked if they could check out the printer or if they had another printer I could use. They didn't and replied that that was how thier printers printed. Then they tried to reprint my pages from one of the behind-the-desk printers and after over a half hour of trying to figure out how the printers worked, asked if I could email the pages to them and they would try to print them out later that day. After almost 2 hours and 20$, I decided that I had had it with the "K" place. I started to drive back to the univeristy and was feeling greatly disturbed and disgrunteld, when I noticed a office supply store (we'll call it store "S"). I thought that I could find my 25% cotton paper and then maybe I could beg someone at the univeristy to let me print off my pages somewhere. Luckily the paper was in stock and I grab two boxes (just in case) and run to the cashier. As I am leaving I look at the reciept I'm shocked and amazed to learn that I have paid close to 40$ for these two boxes of paper. When I recover from the mild cardio infraction I realize that I had actually been charged for more boxes than I had in reality purchased. So back to the cashier, who talks to me in Spanish (another tirade for anther day), for my refund and then I'm off to the university. I am finally able to print my pages, when someone else sends a bunch of articles to the printer I was using and ends up printing thier articles on almost a whole box worth of my paper... the 10$ a box paper... and I about freak out. Good thing I bought that second box. Finally 4 hours and 40$ later my thesis was printed out, another 30 minutes and it was turned in. Sigh... it was a long day that really made me question the helpfulness of printer-outer-establishments.