My store sells pens. Many, many pens. The majority of them are in a large, cubic acrylic display. Each slot contains a label that has the pen name and price on it. The pens do not come with these. I have to type up, print, and stick on every one myself. There are probably close to 150 labels.
There are little pads of paper to test these pens out on, lying around in plain sight EVERYWHERE. You can’t swing a dead lemur without hitting a testing pad. Yet, for some reason, many people see it necessary to scribble all over the display labels that I’ve made, eventually totally obscuring it with pen marks.
I just spent most of the day yesterday printing new ones. I also made up a neon pink sign that I stuck on the display that says, “Please, do NOT write on shelf labels. Kindly use testing pads to try out pens. Thanks for your consideration.”
For my trouble, I was rewarded with two scribbles on my brand-new labels within an hour of putting both them and the sign up.
Why are some people so lazy or such assholes as to do this?? I’ve never even thought to write on something belonging to a store, at ANY store. If I ever catch anyone doing this, I will make sure to charge them for the cost of the labels, because those large, printer-use adhesive label sheets are not cheap.
To the people who do this sort of thing: Fuck you. You are lazy assholes. I’m already busy enough, but I have to take the time to fix this so my boss doesn’t give me shit because the pen display looks like crap. Have some fucking respect and use what’s provided to you, you filthy consumer whores.
I know you’re venting and didn’t ask for advice, but you might consider getting a roll of transparent Contact paper and “laminating” your labels. That ought to frustrate would-be scribblers.
Yeah, we thought about doing that. Unfortunately, if we used our laminator, it would seal the adhesive underneath the plastic. The department says the pre-laminated adhesive labels are too expensive, since we need to replace them sometimes due to wear and price changes. I’m not sure how much good laminated labels would be, anyway. It would deter the ballpoint pens, but the gel pens and permanent markers would still be able to write over them.
Easy to solve.
Move the display close to the register.
Give whoever mans the register a bunch of pads.
When they see someone using the display as a writing surface, the person at the register throws a handful of pads at the scribbler.
Could be worse. You could be selling spray paint and dealing with cretins that don’t understand the “cap color is the paint color” concept and have to be sure that green paint really is green, using the shelves or the floor as the test spot.
Okay, get some skin secretions from these guys; apply to the pens or the labels, whatever is appropiate.
Sell wipes from behind the desk at $10.00. The price of a thing shall be what the market will bear.
Oh, I would love to do this. The unit it’s on and the display itself, though, is a semi-permanent fixture; that is, it could technically be removed, but not without a buttload of tools and screws. Thing is damn heavy. There’s also no place else to put it at current. I hope this will change in the future, though.
Oh yes. Years ago I used to work at Michaels and this happened all the time. Both floor and shelves had little multicoloured spots in random places. The customer base there was definitely worse.
Since you’re printing these out, why not get some kind of label template going? Then you just have to go get it off the 'puter and tell it to print, instead of typing them all over again. A simple program like Print Artist could do that, with, say, the “Return Address” label size, meant for envelopes. Then you just get a box of the appropriate Avery labels and feed in however many sheets you need.
ETA: You can also put scotch tape over the labels, but it’s a bugger to get off when ya want to; have to stand there and pick at it.
Maybe packing tape; probably wide enough to cover the whole label, but not as expensive as laminating or quite as much of a pita as strips of scotch tape. Might not deter all of the scribblers, but might help.
What you REALLY need are pressure sensitive contacts behind the labels. Then wire the contacts to alarms, klaxons, fire sprinklers, booby hatches, or any other item that suits your fancy–perhaps a different one for each label?
Go ahead, motherfuckers, WRITE on the labels, I double dog DARE ya!
That’s a good one! It reminds me of being in the girl’s bathroom in a bar I went to, while in college. On the wall there was the painting ofa man, wearing only a loincloth. Said loincloth was on a hinge. It said “DO NOT LIFT THIS LOINCLOTH!!!”
Of course I lifted the loincloth, and was rewarded with a loud buzzer and a flashing light when I left the room, proclaiming to all that I’d looked.
I remember hearing it earlier, not knowing what was going on or why folks laughed. And none of the other women told us about it, because they didn’t want to be the only one caught!
Would it be possible to have some kind of paper flap in place over the labels, that people could mark on, and not the label? A paper flap could be raised to get the price, and easily replaced once it was too used.
I work in a college bookstore and we have the exact fucking goddamn same problem. There’s a little pad of paper literally right next to EVERY FUCKING PEN DISPLAY, and does anyone ever use the goddamn pad? No, they scrawl on the display, on the shelf, on the other displays… Grrrr…
Me? Why, NO I didn’t spend a significant portion of my day trying to clean misspelled obscenities off several of our displays, why do you ask?
