Office Depot Store #20 Refused to print our catalog!

We don't keep large quantities of our catalogs around since the majority of our customers browse our listings online, but we still have to keep some on hand for the occasional wholesale account; when we run out, it has been (until now) a simple matter to stop at the nearby copy center have more made. So, on the morning of Wednesday, January 15, 2003, having exhausted our prior batch, we dropped off a fresh set of our catalog pages to be duplicated at Office Depot #20, at 5330 W. 34th St here in Houston. Around three o'clock that afternoon, we got a phone call. It seems that somebody at the store had determined that our catalog contained "inappropriate" things, and they flatly refused to copy it. We asked for, and after a lengthy delay received, the name and phone number of their District Manager, but we were unable to contact him; his phone rang endlessly, with neither a human response nor an answering machine. So we called Office Depot's national Customer Service line (1-800-GO-DEPOT). Their telephone representative said that he found the store's refusal to print our catalog pages rather odd, and proceeded to try to get the store manager on the line to speak to me. About 10 minutes of waiting on hold went by, at which point the home office person (who was, by the way, quite courteous throughout) came back on the line having apparently spoken to the store manager. He stated that the policy decision on what is and is not appropriate to print is left up to the individual stores, and that the store manager was not going to be overruled on this. Needless to say, we asked to speak to someone higher up the food chain, and were transferred to another person in what we believe may have been their administrative offices...who affirmed the other person's statements and then offered to lodge a complaint with the company management about the situation. We indicated that a complaint was indeed what we had in mind...and thus far, we have heard nothing more from them about the matter. When we picked up the scorned pages at Office Depot on Thursday, we explicitly inquired as to precisely what was deemed "inappropriate", so that we would know in advance what their policy was. (As if we were ever going to darken their doorstep again.) Surprisingly, these are the two things that the store manager cited as being "inappropriate"; "Die, Barney, Die!" and "Happy, Happy - Kill, Kill". Can you say "unclear on the extent of what is considered humor"? Moreover, the store manager stated that the reason for the refusal to print the copies was that he couldn't "expose" his employees to this objectionable material, and that it "wasn't the sort of thing that we should be involved with." (Noting that at no time was any request made for Office Depot to endorse, approve, or lend their imprimatur to the material in question, how does copying it make them "involved"?)

Now, to us, all of that sounded a bit odd to be a real policy for a major corporation. Generally, multi-store chains have very firm guidelines defining what their stores should and should not do, and being tolerant, honest and up-front - and most of all, being consistent in the way they handle their customers - is almost never a matter that is simply left to individual employee discretion. Given that we'd had exactly the same materials duplicated at that store numerous times over the past few years, it's not like Office Depot had never seen us, or our catalog, before. (In fact, in one instance a couple of years back, one of their employees even asked for a copy of the catalog...and in order to keep that individual from getting in trouble with the store, I gave her one of the ones that I was paying for, so that she couldn't be accused of having run copies for personal use without paying for them.) Since the unanticipated refusal in this instance appeared to be a rather dramatic change without any external indications as to what was going on, we got curious to see if perhaps we could unravel what was apparently causing the store's copy-center tail to wag the corporate dog at the policy level.

Obviously, the people in that store weren't going to be much more help, so we decided to start closer to the top of the Office Depot heap...and we soon uncovered a big clue. Office Depot's corporate Ethics Guide was posted on their corporate website, and among other things it contained this statement: 'It is Office Depot's policy to provide its employees with a working environment free from the influence of all forms of harassment and discrimination and to respect the privacy and dignity of all employees.' One way that this sort of statement can become a real tailbiter for management and the company is that sets the stage so that an easily offended (or other-agenda-equipped) employee can cite it in refusing to do a job, claiming that the task might expose them to something that they view as constituting "harassment". On the other hand, it's also quite possible that an excessively zealous manager, inspired by such a statement, may interpret it pro-actively, becoming overly "protective" in a misplaced effort to create a working atmosphere so sanitized that it bears no relationship to the real world. We won't try to deny that a good many of our more in-your-face bumper stickers are pretty much designed to offend certain people. Part of the whole idea of Freedom of Speech is that when you need to say something that isn't popular or isn't nice, the people who are going to be offended should only have recourse if what you're saying is slanderous...and much as they might like to think otherwise, nothing in our collection could reasonably be put in that category.

Now, as it happens, on the same page of the Office Depot corporate Ethics Guide as the statement cited above, there's another one that seems perhaps relevant as well: 'Office Depot will not permit any employee to harass (sexually or otherwise) another employee or to discriminate against another employee, customer or vendor in any way, including without limitation, by means of ethnic, racial, sexual or religious remarks, animosity, unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors. Office Depot has "Zero" tolerance for harassment or discimination.' Well, that cuts both ways, and if they're really serious about this one from the standpoint of not discriminating against their customers, then perhaps they need to take a good look at who they're hiring for their copy center help! Let's face it, no matter what personal credo or philosophy any given individual may have, at some point it is pretty much inevitable that a customer is going to come along who disagrees with that person...and who will be needing to have copies made of materials that explicitly offend the employee in some basic way. If an individual who can't accept and cope with the fact that there are viewpoints and tastes at variance with their own is placed in a position where their tastes are allowed to override their responsibility to handle or work with a customer's materials, then the employer has just acted to legitimize, approve of and accept the employee's own discriminatory act as being the act of the corporation. Given that in the same Office Depot Ethics Guide discussed above, there's an entire page that explicitly states that the employee must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could impact their ability to do their jobs, it would seem entirely appropriate for Office Depot to ask them if there is any material which, although legal to duplicate, they would object to handling in the course of their copy center job...and if they indicate that they've got a conflict of interest, then they simply shouldn't be assigned to that task. That, as a matter of fact, is one of the things that the Ethics Guide suggests as the remedy when such a conflict exists. Perhaps they just haven't realized this yet.

In any event, in the precise incident under discussion, had there been material of an affirmatively illegal nature involved, there really wouldn't be any question that Office Depot was well within the bounds of reasonable practices in condoning the store manager's refusal to print the catalogs...but such is hardly the case. They stated only that the material was inappropriate, and that, to us, sure looks like simple censorship. Admittedly, it was camoflaged under the guise of "protecting" Office Depot's employees, but how far will they go to "protect" their employees, and what's the hazard here? From where we're sitting, then, the most reasonable explanation of the root cause of Office Depot's refusal to print our catalogs lies in Office Depot having painted itself into a policy corner with their Ethics Guide, and then having failed to adapt to the necessities it imposes by asking the right questions when they're hiring and assigning people to tasks. In doing so, it appears to us that they have set themselves up to lose business needlessly. And, frankly, if that's what they want to do, so be it. If Office Depot doesn't want our business, there are others who do.

One final amusing development: We got the copies made at one of Office Depot's competitors nearby, and their staff found the contents funny. We gave them one of our business cards so that they could visit this website on their own time. Hi guys! Keep up the good work, you'll be seeing more of us!

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