Office Depot (South Square)

Overview

The Office Depot (Store #122) near South Square shopping center in Durham, NC is located in the former Big Star building, the sole remaining (out)building from the original South Square Mall.

Reference

• listing at Office Depot web site

Encounters

• 2006-10-28, from Woozle: I went into this store a little before noon, trying to find tubes for shipping posters (this would have been ideal, but there were plenty of alternative possibilities). As I approached the shipping supplies area (on the left wall as you enter the store, kind of hidden from the main open area), the employee who had been apparently re-filing items from a shopping cart went off somewhere and didn't come back. All I could find was one tube, mis-filed, of the wrong length. After substantial hunting around to see if there were other places I should be looking, I approached the lady at the UPS shipping counter, who paged someone (through their wireless system, not an overhead PA) to assist me; she said he would meet me in the shipping supplies area. I went back there and waited 10 minutes, but no employees walked within hailing distance. I went back and talked to the shipping counter lady again to make sure I had the right place; she confirmed this, and paged the same person again – this time describing what I was wearing, in case the other employee had gotten confused and helped someone else on their way to me. I waited for another 5-10 minutes, but nobody ever showed up.

So I dropped off my used ink cartridge and went to the Office Max at New Hope Commons instead, where they did at least have one of the kind of tube I needed and the shipping supplies department at least didn't look like it came from Soviet Russia. I suppose I could have asked again, but it didn't seem likely that Office Depot would be able to pull additional tubes out of thin air – I should note that I had been to that area of the store several times in the past half-year or so looking for poster tubes, and it had always looked about that empty.

(Does Office Depot still do the thing where you bring them a used ink cartridge and they give you a ream of recycled paper? I couldn't find any mention of this in the store, but I was a bit distracted with irritation by the time I dropped off the ink cartridge.)