A Card-Carrying Member Of The Idiot’s Club

I work at an office retailer, and part of our print services includes producing and cutting business cards. A lot of times, we have customers bring in designs for us to cut out, as creating a design costs a sizeable fee and at least twenty-four hours of production time.

This story follows the former. He had paid for the largest order of cards to be cut, providing a design he had created. No big problem there, until he returns a week later and throws the cards on the counter.

Customer: “You can take back these s***ty cards. My customers can’t read them. Why didn’t you tell me they were hard to read?”

Me: “Oh, that’s not good. Did we design these?”

Customer: “No, I designed them.”

I was confused as to why he was even mad at us. To design a business card, even a simple one, takes at least ten minutes, and you have to lay out every letter and detail. This customer watched it all come together before his very eyes on a computer monitor and ordered us to only make the cuts.

I thought his design was awful and hard to read, but seeing as how he designed it, I opted not to say anything since he wouldn’t make anything he wouldn’t approve of. And some creators can be fiercely defensive of what they create.

He must have known he was wrong though since he didn’t argue about paying for a whole other order of cuts PLUS a rebuild of a design we made for him months ago. Maybe he was thinking that by coming in and insulting his own design, he’d get a refund and a discount?