Recently I’ve had three interesting experiences with the Office Max store in Dallas that is near the intersection of Park and US 75.

Let me set this up for you. I have an HP printer for my computer that uses small ink cartridges. In fact, so small that I buy at least one black cartridge a week, and one color cartridge every two weeks.

Both Office Max and Office Depot give you a $3 discount when you return the empty ink cartridge. And that's why I buy refills from them.

I’m a built-in $100 monthly annuity for an office supply store.

And since Office Max is the closest to my office, they got the annuity. And with that came the other office supplies I picked up each time I went for ink.

Last week, I bought a new black cartridge, installed it, and it had no ink in it.

I took it back. The clerk, who appeared to be some sort of manager, insisted that I had brought back a cartridge I had already used, so he refused to replace it.

(I'm 68-years old, and was dressed in a coat and tie...hardly the age and look of someone on a binge to steal 15 bucks from an office supply store.)

He suggested that rather than buy another HP cartridge, that I let him refill the empty cartridge from some gizmo the store has so that I could at least save a couple of bucks.

I was trying my best not to get into an argument. So, OK, I let him refill it.

That cartridge spattered ink all over everything when I tried to print with it. I took it back for a replacement. Same guy told me it couldn’t possibly be the refilled cartridge, it had to be a malfunctioning printer.

I left and went to Office Depot, bought a new HP cartridge, installed it and it worked fine. I swore I wouldn't go back to Office Max again, I'd watch how their corporate stock traded instead.

Today I was in a big hurry. I broke my promise to myself to never buy anything from Office Max again. I was inadvertently out of printer ink, and I didn’t have time to drive the extra distance to Office Depot.

I handed my empty cartridge to the cashier for my $3 discount, and she told me that the store no longer has that program. (Nevermind that Office Depot, their major competitor, does.)

Instead, she said I’d need to apply for some sort of store card and they would then give me a credit on the card. I guess that would be used to purchase prizes or something.

I told her I didn’t want to apply, to give me back my empty cartridge, to charge me the normal shelf price for the cartridge I was buying, and to count me as a former customer, effective July 6, 2008.

In the past 52 weeks, Office Max’s stock has dropped from a high of $40.16 to the close this past Friday of $13.98.

And that’s because gross sales and profits have dropped.

The chairman of the board notified stockholders that he thinks this can be solved by raising prices and cutting overhead. He says the whole thing has been caused by the lowering of the economy.

The real problem is that he, his officers and directors, and his store managers and employees don’t get it. All they have to do is read this piece to know almost all they need to know about what to do.

The one thing it isn't is raising prices and cutting overhead.