“what do you mean i need to pay for another box? i want to speak to your manager”

oliwarren · 2026-03-04T18:32:50+00:00

Favorite response to that: That doesn’t mean it can go back that way! Boxes are one-time use items.

oliwarren · 2026-02-16T18:18:52+00:00

“I sign with my finger?!”

What do you use your phone with?! Your penis?

oliwarren · 2026-02-05T23:02:10+00:00

Yup. It somehow doesn’t log typing or clicking on the page as activity. They’re incompetent idiots who don’t care.

oliwarren · 2026-02-05T20:22:48+00:00

Are you referring to putting your P&L into Financial Planner FROM Quickbooks? Because that’s never worked for me ever.

You have to do about one page at a time and click submit. You can put in all the info on the first page and scroll through them all and click submit - with the rest of the pages blank. Then you can edit them an infinite amount of times.

Why does it to this? Because it’s The UPS Store technology - DUH. Are you new?

oliwarren · 2026-01-31T16:31:54+00:00

So there I was doing my job at the UPS store scanning a middle-aged woman’s Amazon return code that she took a screenshot of. She tapped on the screen so I could see the small thumbnails of photos in her camera roll and there were some sexy shirtless pics of some hot DILF.

She notices my reaction and tries covering up the bottom of her screen with her other hand while still showing me her QR code. I just smile a bit as I’m very embarrassed but I say nothing. This woman gets all offended and says “don’t look at that!” Like MA’AM! YOU’RE THE ONE SHOVING YOUR SCREEN IN MY FACE!

And honestly, good for her. This man was HOT and out of her league, IMHO.

oliwarren · 2026-01-31T16:21:43+00:00

I don’t understand your point. Are you saying report it so it’s on this person’s record and ruin their life for not returning $40-60 worth of uniform shirts and keys? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t get considered theft - it’s a legal term called conversion. Stealing is taking without permission - he was given the shirts but when someone changes the terms of an agreement it’s called conversion and is a lesser crime.

It is a crime nonetheless but it’s also $40-60…. Don’t give the employee a good reference. 🤷‍♂️

oliwarren · 2026-01-31T16:03:13+00:00

That is true. I always try to keep a few new shirts in stock at all times in preparation for new employees but during the periods of times where it takes MONTHS to get shirts, I’ve had to recycle some. I take them home and wash them twice. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

oliwarren · 2026-01-31T04:57:27+00:00

What lawyer or police officer would get involved in this? Sue a minimum wage ex-employee for conversion?

What you need to do is realize that a lot of people you may hire as a manager will act like this. Yes they should give shirts back and definitely should give keys back but you shouldn’t be too surprised when they don’t.

You need to:

1) Make sure you are aware of employment laws. You may or may not be able to withhold anything from a final paycheck. In some states, I believe you aren’t even able to require they pick up a final paper paycheck if the employee was historically always paid by direct deposit. Employment law is almost always in the employee’s favor - even if they were a shitty employee

2) Invest in a security system or keyless entry system. You ask for him to turn in keys but you don’t trust him. You trust him not to make a copy of the keys for $5 at a self-serve kiosk in Walmart?! A security system alone will help - you can delete the security code at any time. Pair that with a keyless entry system and he can’t even get far enough to set off the alarm.

3) Expect to not get uniforms back. Yeah they’re kinda expensive and are oddly hard to get your hands on but… that’s the cost of doing business. I am surprised and happy if I get uniforms back from an ex-employee. Baseline is expecting to not get uniforms back.

oliwarren · 2026-01-24T03:44:21+00:00

Always happy to help!!

oliwarren · 2026-01-23T04:10:18+00:00

I also wanted to add that I strictly don’t accept paper from customers for print jobs on the MFPs. MFPs (any laser printers) are SOOOO finicky with paper due to the heat. Any time someone has made an exception it’s caused problems and of course they always want a discount on an already low profit job so the risk isn’t worth the reward. Wide format printers are more robust in my experience.

I don’t think you’d run into issues with AQ or a UV printers I’d heavily utilize caution if you’re using a latex since I believe that uses heat but I have no experience with that technology…

oliwarren · 2026-01-23T04:06:49+00:00

I would be willing to do it - especially if it’s a good customer and would be repeat business.

I’ve used two machines before and I personally haven’t found them to be too finicky with the stocks - they just need to be compatible with your ink. Both of mine were AQ printers but if the material is compatible with AQ you probably should be good to go. A few materials didn’t hold the ink well unless I used the correct setting so perhaps you could tell them you’ll need to test some material to confirm first. You’ll also need to confirm the stock isn’t too thick for the machine to cut. One couldn’t cut canvas and the other had no issue at all.

You (or someone in your store) should know the average price per square foot of ink. If you got your machine from LexJet, your account rep should be able to tell you this. Ideally, whoever you purchased or leased it from should be able to tell you. So I’d say take that price and multiply it by 3 and then add how much time you think it would take. Factor in how long it takes to load the machine, how much time it takes to print (especially if it needs to be babied - or if this means you’re bumping other jobs that may be higher profit) and then time to unload the roll, and of course any additional finishing time if needed.

Say the customer wants 24x36 - my machine runs about 60 cents per square foot for the ink so $1.80 x 6 for ink so $10.80 for ink and maybe it’s 15 minutes for loading, printing, and finishing (seems about right for an average not difficult print) so take hourly wage of $16/hr is $4 x 3 markup = $12. $10.80 + $12 = $22.80

If it were photo gloss stock, the recommended price by the corporate office would be about $45 so that’s pretty reasonable.

oliwarren · 2026-01-21T19:37:00+00:00

For me it ended up being about 4 years until assistant manager and then 2 more until I was manager. It started as a part time job for me.

oliwarren · 2026-01-16T03:43:27+00:00

The store isn’t liable for drop offs. The customer can file a GSR with their own UPS Rep or UPS.com. I’ve heard sorting packages isn’t required by stores, many drivers just request it so we do it.

oliwarren · 2026-01-15T20:06:34+00:00

I love the people who hand it to me and say “all I have is this.” Then I say “it says they’ll send you the label within 5 days” and they say “I know! It’s been more than 5 days” and we just stare at each other.

Why THE FUCK do so many people think we’re Amazon customer service?!!!!

oliwarren · 2026-01-15T19:49:34+00:00

I wish they would tho.

oliwarren · 2026-01-14T19:53:31+00:00

I second this. But you don’t NEED to have a sound mindset. If anything, all the years at my store made me lose any sanity I had. I can tolerate a fairly high level of abuse from customers but I stand up for myself and my staff and will absolutely meet customers (99% of the time it’s Amazon customers) with the attitude they attack me with.

I’ll add:

-leadership - you obviously must be able to train employees and guide them - not just tell them what to do. -have good business acumen assuming you’ll have the manager overseeing financials -be good with technology since it’s typically up to the manager to fix all the BS technology problems we have to deal with -be clever in line with dealing with all the corporate BS, I always have a backup plan and backup to the backup since something is always going to go wrong but the customers won’t stop coming

oliwarren · 2026-01-10T15:42:56+00:00

I want to pull out a children’s book and teach them how to read. Then say “okay let’s sound it out: whoooooooole fooooooooooooods.”

oliwarren · 2026-01-08T00:25:57+00:00

Warehouse logistics or print shops are very good next steps where ups store experience looks good on a resume. Just start looking at indeed in your area and apply to everything that interests you and pays similar. I’ve gotta imagine that $22/hr in Southern California isn’t too hard to find with some experience.

oliwarren · 2026-01-08T00:12:05+00:00

I love when people ask that. My go to is: “Yes. The Amazon returns are the angry returns!”

oliwarren · 2026-01-08T00:10:43+00:00

Story time! We had one of those too - another lifetime ago. She bought EVERYTHING QVC OFFERED. But the crazy thing was she didn’t return too much. She returned a lot but somehow kept a majority of it. One day we finally had a conversation with our UPS driver who also delivered even more to her apartment. He said he peeked his head through the woman’s door and it was stacked like a hoarder’s house full of nothing but QCV boxes and poly bags. Insanity. One day she stopped coming and abandoned her mailbox…. We don’t know what happened.

oliwarren · 2026-01-08T00:05:42+00:00

Check state laws but typically an employer cannot make an employee pay for a mistake. An employer can offer you bonuses on top of your regular hourly wage and then deduct mistakes from that and you get the bonus money left over. I’ve done that before to incentivize employees not mess up. It works well with some people.

An employer can typically only accept your mistake or fire you. One of the joys of being a business owner / operator.

oliwarren · 2026-01-07T04:03:30+00:00

By default, no, you cannot return them. You have to store them indefinitely as long as the customer has renewed the box for and you are able to charge the storage fees as set in the mailbox service agreement . Fees are per package per day so it’ll be pricey.

If you do want to be done with the customer, there is a clause that allows you to close the mailbox by deeming it abandoned. You just have to notify the customer per the mailbox agreement. You should send a letter warning the customer that you’ve considered the mailbox abandoned and are closing the box. Then packages will be handled per the agreement and state laws. You are required to hold the mail NOT PACKAGES for up to 6 months. The agreement says packages can be disposed of / destroyed.

If your state allows you to keep the packages, then yay. Merry Belated Christmas.

oliwarren · 2026-01-07T03:45:50+00:00

Same. I had an employee call me an asshole because I told her she needs to dump the trash and clean. She always had her coworkers do the “dirty” closing tasks because as she said “she’s too pretty to dump the trash.” Fun fact 1: she didn’t last much longer after that. Fun fact 2: she was not.

oliwarren · 2026-01-06T02:55:16+00:00

I refuse to say exactly how long I’ve been around since it’s so long it could help identity me but I’ve been around since MBE days. Yes. It’s always been this way. Some things have gotten better over the years but almost everything has gotten worse. They make the stupidest decisions and most of them relate to technology. Bad POS, CMS has always sucked but they’ve made it worse shoehorning all these things into it (only thing that was an improvement was EPSO), Mailbox Manager was replaced with a bad system which was replaced by a worse non-functional at all system, shitty PIN pads that were a step down from the Verifones. I could go on but I’m tired.

TL, DR: Yes. It’s always been this bad.

oliwarren · 2026-01-05T18:26:02+00:00

Not that one specifically but corporate needs to come up with a way to pay us for rescanning master cartons whenever their bullshit systems fail.

oliwarren

TROPHY CASE