French, no Frenchier... no, More Frenchy!!!

Another one from back in the day. Same printshop all my previous stories have come from. We had a client come in who was starting a new store with candles & body-care products (lotions & such) and she needed to be fitted out from top to bottom, business cards, letterheads, etc, etc, etc... Jackpot!!

So she comes in for her first consult, and I'm working on her logo. She wants it in a script font, but I'm encouraging her towards something easy to read from a distance, if she wants to use it on signs and such. So I ask her for her ideas, inspirations, etc... so that I can start working something up from her. It's like pulling teeth. The only thing I can get out of her is that she wants a script font. And she wants it to be "french". Everything I show her, she declines, saying she wants it to be more "French". So guess what we end up with??? Oh, yes, that's right... French Script! (Apparently the font name was all she needed to tell her that this was indeed "french" enough for her).

This woman was a thorn in my side for the next year. Every time she came in, she had yet another ridiculous request. First it was 3 x 3 labels (which I had to order from a third party) for her homemade candles. Next it was tiny 1 x 2" tags for lotions & such that had to have a hole punched in them, and were barely 1 x 1" once folded. If that wasn't bad enough, these tags were printed in 5, count 'em FIVE!!! spot colors. The alignment was driving the pressman crazy, not to mention we had to leave room for the hole punch. Plus she picked a heavy linen cardstock that was impossible to print in a way that the fold would follow the grain of the paper, so all the folds were rough-looking. It was ridiculous.

I think the day she came in to pick up the folded tags was the first day I realized she had a good-sized patch of hair on her chest. Ick! Not exactly the person I want to be buying body-care products from, hmmm? She gradually tapered off on the stuff she ordered from us, and eventually never came back. I'd never visited her store, so I can only suppose that it closed.

Off-Topic Rant

Okay, I know I haven't been doing this long, but it's time for my first off-topic rant. I really, really hate the commercials for Kisasa. I don't even know what it is, some bank thing, and they're driving me NUTS! It's like instead of a casting call, they held a "hey everyone who has an extremely weird/grating voice come record a commercial for us" call.

"Do you Kisasa?"

Why, no... no I do not.

Uh.... No, I can't do that....

So, I've been working 50 - 60 hour weeks on a big project, so I haven't been updating this, but here's another story from back in the day. This happened about 6 years ago. I was still at the mom-n-pop printshop in the shopping center. We had lots of one-time customers with people making copies, sending faxes, and ordering wedding/party invitations (a lucrative side-line we did). So, I was used to fielding calls from random people asking if we can/can't do something. We were the only print/copy shop on our side of town, so it happened a lot. One afternoon, about 3:00, this is what happened...

Me: XXXXXX Printing, how can I help you?
Young Girl: Uh, yeah... Like, can you, like... change something that's printed and print me a new copy?
Me: Well, I can scan it in and see what I can do, but I can't make any promises until I see what it is and you tell me what you need to have done, so why don't you bring it on down and I'll see what I can do for you.
Girl: Okay...

Half an hour later.... *door chime*
I popped out of my office and walked to the front reception area. The elderly guy was off that day, or maybe he was taking a nap in the back, I don't know... But anyway, I had to greet all visitors since there was no one in reception.

There were two very young teenagers in the front reception area. A pretty girl, and what was apparently her boyfriend. (Keep in mind, that at this point in my life, I was only 19, so I wasn't very far away from being in their shoes).

Me: Hi, are you the girl who called earlier?
Girl: Yeah....
Me: Okay, come on back to my office and let's see what you have.

She followed me back to my office. I sat down at my desk and pulled out a chair for her. She handed over a folded up piece of paper, and I unfolded it and laid it on my light box. The first thing that catches my attention is the watermark... oh, boy. Second, the raised seal at the bottom. Oh yeah, this is not going to work... The girl, seeing the expression on my face, starts babbling "Okay, I just need you to turn this, this, and this into A's or B's, it's just, I don't..."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was her report card.

I sat in stunned silence for a few minutes, then I folded it back up and handed it to her. I gave her some speech about facing the music, told her I was only a couple years older than her, and how I understood what she was going through (I really didn't, I was a straight A-B student, but I was trying to be empathetic) and I sent her back home to face her parents.

Oh, but it doesn't end there. The entire front wall of our office is glass, so I can see out into the parking lot. She goes out the door with the boy, then stops & starts crying. Being the "tough guy" that only a spindly 5 foot nothing skinny white boy with a backwards baseball cap and 10x too-big jeans can be, he starts screaming towards our office "This is BULLSH*T!!!" flipping me off and generally making a fool out of himself. I was tempted to call the cops on him, but I decided that the girl had enough problems to deal with that day.

Shaking my head, I locked the front door just in case, and went back to my office to continue working on what I'd been doing before she walked in...

Inaugural Rant

Hello all. I hope that this becomes an outlet for all my frustrations at the way we lowly printing company employees are treated. The worst offenders? No doubt our own clients... who are supposed to be business professionals themselves. I work in the printing department of a very very large company that services a specific niche type of business. I will not be naming my company or any of my clients, and all co-worker names if written will be pseudonyms. I have been working in the printing industry for 10 years. It's the only thing I really know and love, and despite a couple of stints in call centers when times were tough, it's all I've ever really done since before I left high school. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a graphic artist, I'm more of a typesetter. I mainly do newsletters, business forms, contracts, flyers and other mostly text-centric items, though I can and do handle the odd bit of design work here and there, but we have other people for that at my current place.

Here's just a sample story, from many years ago at the mom & pop printshop I started out in.

This printshop only has five employees, one of whom is hard of hearing, another is the owner (more than likely in his office playing solitaire), the other is an extremely elderly man we kept around for sentimental reasons even though he didn't actually do anything, and the one other besides me is the actual press man. Hence, I always answer the phone when it rings.

A client, and a business owner no less, calls me up and wants to order 2000 more letterheads & business cards for himself and two other employees. Cool, no problem, man. I give him the price and give him his pickup date. Of course, this is the first thing out of his mouth, "Oh, you mean I can't pick them up this afternoon?"
Me: "Uh, no sir. We have to print the letterheads and the business cards have to go to the thermographer. It's going to be at least 3 business days." [a third-party company handles our thermography and 4-color work as we only have one ancient spot-color press]
Client: "Oh, I thought you had them there in stock. This is awful!! We have a huge presentation tomorrow at a trade show and we're all completely out of business cards!!"

Seriously, dude... you have a tremendously important function at which you're going to be trying to make sales and network and you don't even make sure to call about your business cards at least a week in advance when you KNOW you're out?? Second of all, no, we do not print off 2000 extras every time you make an order. That would be ridiculous. We're working out of a barely 2000 square foot storefront in a strip mall. Where do you expect us to store all your extra business supplies, holding them "just in case" you need some immediately? Not to mention all our other clients. We barely even have room to keep our supplies of paper for the week. And the fact that we pay the thermographer for these? Pish-posh, we know you're totally good for it... you totally aren't going to fire any of the last 50 people you had cards made for (making all those 'extra cards' obsolete trash), or shut your business down and leave us holding the bill.... that never happens.

I seriously don't know where this idea comes from. I've had this same exact conversation with so many clients over the years. What are you people thinking??!! Would you do anything with any other business this way? Would you walk into kinko's after having 50 copies of a flyer made last week and expect them to magically have 100 more just waiting in case you came back in and wanted more immediately (and to eat the cost if you did not, in fact, come back)? Do you expect a waiter to have another portion of your dinner warming on the hot rack just in case you didn't order enough food or wanted some to go? Of course not... but it always happens to us printshop people. Let me get this out there, for the record, folks. Printers do not... EVER (unless you're friends with the owner or a long time client) keep large numbers of extras on hand of your customized print materials. Generic receipt books, plain paper, and anything else non-customized, sure. But stuff with your name and address on it? No. We don't have the storage space, or the money to just eat the cost until you decide to come back in to pay us for previously printed items.

Now if you're paying in advance, that's another story. Low on storage space, but want 5000 menus ready to go at a moment's notice because your menus are just plain paper and people rip them, stain them, write on them or whatever... that's perfectly fine. We'll find the space. And probably won't even charge you a storage fee. But if you want to add a new entree or special and expect your money back for those 5000 menus you now "can't use". No f*cking way. Never gonna happen, man.

-The Printer