Customer: “I need to get my Christmas family card out. Print a hundred of these for me.”

Me: “I can certainly print them for you, but will you be able to get them sent out in time for Christmas?”

Customer: “I won’t if you keep dawdling!”

Me: “If I put it in as a rush, it will cost [amount].”

Customer: “What?! That’s obscene!”

Me: “The post office closes in an hour. Today is the last day they can guarantee mail before Christmas Day. You don’t have a choice.”

Customer: “You’re ruining my Christmas!”

Me: “You ruined it yourself by leaving this until the last minute.”

She paid the rush fee, but then stood there moaning at my manager long enough that she didn’t make it in time for the Post Office. Of course she came back in to complain about that to and try to get a refund. Why do the holidays bring out the crazies?

Related:
A Lack Of Planning On Your Part…

I work for a T-shirt printing company. A frat dude comes in with a design he wants to put on shirts for his brothers.

I recreate his (bad) design and do as he asks. 

Client: “This looks terrible! Why did you do it this way?”

Me: “Because that’s what you asked me to do?”

I was working for a printing company as a graphic designer, and we had this one client that made up a good percentage of our business — like 35% of our business.

They had a major project come up that was in a time crunch and worth millions of dollars to them.

They came to us and asked us if we could take care of the printing of these materials for their proposal; 250 sets of the final proposal had to be printed and bound using super-nice luxury materials, special foil on the front, etc., and the proposal was 150 pages, double-sided, with tabbed sections.

Everything had to be custom-made, even the tabs and cover.

It was a disaster from the start. The client gave us the wrong version of the proposal, so we had to stop printing mid-print.

Then, they changed the cover, which meant changing the size of the cover (oversize) and redoing the metal plates for the foil.

Then, they had more changes to the proposal inside — two days before it was due.

What they submitted was filled with spelling errors and grammar errors.

I went through and fixed all the errors, fixed their margins, and made it look stunning, adding in graphs that didn’t look right or match their stats and making it look like a showstopper.

For forty-eight hours, another employee and I worked our a**es off getting this project printed, assembled, bound, and boxed, ready to go.

My boss and I personally delivered it to our client’s office.

The project manager saw the final version and started screaming at me for fixing her mistakes, etc., telling me that they were going to lose this proposal, that it was all my fault, and that we had printed the wrong version.

My boss interrupted her and told her to f*** off. He said that I had spent two full days at the office, not even sleeping, to make her half-a**ed project done on time and that I had spent precious time fixing her mistakes after she had sent us incomplete materials and non-standard files.

Little did I know that he’d kept a copy of the mistake-ridden proposal and bound one as a before and after case study.

He took me, a finished proposal, and the mistake proposal up to the president of the company — someone who he knew really, really, well and had worked with for years. My boss handed him the two versions and told him that we weren’t going to work with them anymore based on the reactions of this project manager.

The president was shocked that his employee had acted like that. He then looked over the finished project, saw how beautiful it was, and thanked me personally.

They went on to win the proposal, in part because it made them look super-professional.

After they won the proposal, the president called me, the other a**-busting employee, and our boss into his office, treated us to lunch, and then gave us a check for $15,000 for helping them win the proposal as a bonus.

My boss gave me half and the other employee half for our efforts in getting the project done; he didn’t keep a dime for himself.

We did keep them as clients, but we never had to work with that a**hole project manager lady again.

I work in a small, locally-owned print shop that mainly caters to small businesses, with the occasional walk-in.

An older gentleman comes into the store. At first, I think he’s blind because he’s wearing dark sunglasses and carrying what I think is a walking stick. Then, I realize that it is an umbrella, and I next assume he’s going to ask about promotional products. Nothing could prepare me for his actual request.

Customer: *Setting the umbrella on the counter* “Can you laminate this?”

A middle-aged woman enters the store.

Customer: “I want to print some photos on one of your machine things, but I’m not sure how to do it.”

She is gesturing toward the instant machines, and she is holding a digital camera in her hand.

Me: “You need to put the memory card in there, and the rest of the options appear automatically.”

Customer: “Can you show me how?”

 I take the camera and show her how to open the hatch at the bottom to take the memory card out. She immediately starts freaking out.

Customer: *Shouting* “You’ve ruined all of my photographs now! Opening it like that in the light! You should know better! They’re all gone!” 

I did try to explain, but she kept cutting me off. She finally stormed out of the shop amidst threats of legal action for ruining an entire holiday’s worth of photographs.