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...