Customer Service At It's Best

Work is sometimes a joy. It is also sometimes frustrating. One of my most recent joys and irks has been the organization's Annual Report. Lately, I have been DYING to have the annual report finished, printed and thereafter BURNED so I never have to see it again (save one copy to keep for my portfolio, of course). It has been a project that was a pleasure to work on at the beginning, full of creative outlets and fun. It has felt more like a disease that will not leave me for the last month and a half. I sent it to the printers to have it be out of my hair, FREE AT LAST, over 2 weeks ago. You think that would cure me, right? Not so.

Problem #1. The program I created it in does not communicate well with PDF files, so any color fields I had created on the document would not "bleed off the page" when I sent it in pdf format to the printers. So, The printers tell me they want to cut an 8th of an inch off each side of the page so the colors are flush with the paper edge.

Trim the document?!?! Are you serious? You are giving me this as legitimate fix for the problem? Really? Um... No.

So I dig, search, ask, re-maneuver and fix the problem. Funny how a girl with NO PRINTING EXPERIENCE is the one telling the printers how to get the bleeds to work. I mean really. Let's be honest. We all know I'm not the brightest tool in the shed. The easiest fix would have been to just switch printers. And I would have, but they already ordered our paper. Note to self: when you meet the person who started working with them last year, give them the stink eye. A really big, obvious, long-lasting stink eye.

Next -- They tell me, "Sharon, every logo on the document has a funky grey background." Really? Odd. When they used the logo in last year's version, it didn't do that. Ok, I'll switch them all out. I do. One of them is still doing it. What!?!? How is that possible? I do some more changes to try to fix it. They send it to template to print. Lo and behold -- STILL SHOWING UP IN GREY!

"This is going to be an expensive mistake," they tell me, because they have already run the templates.

What lovely news. Working with you brings smiles to my face. "Well," I tell them, "I have no more versions of the logo to play with and I have no more fixes up my sleeve. I don't know what to tell you."

"We can fix it for you in another program."

I'm sorry. What? You can fix it? YOU CAN FIX IT?!?!?!? Thanks. Would ya? That'd be just peachy. You're a gem. I won't mention that you could have offered that up about TWENTY LOGOS AND A WASTED TEMPLATE AGO!"

Somewhere in their training manual, they must have the phrase: "When encountering a printing problem, first bring problem to customer and offer ridiculous solutions and make them solve it. Do NOT OFFER PROFESSIONAL, WORKABLE SOLUTIONS if you don't have to."

Where do they find these people? I should hang out with them. They would make me look very intelligent.