Drawn To Ruin
This story reminded me of my own time when someone tried to help despite my objections.
Years into my job as a copy jockey at a print shop, I had a good grasp of what my regular customers wanted and what to look out for if something wasn’t right with a file. Sometimes files don’t export properly, especially back in the days of Windows ME. Sometimes people don’t realize their graphics are too low resolution to print without looking pixelated. And our boss was in charge of quality control, whether we wanted him to do it or not.
Like clockwork, a regular customer comes in to order a very large banner from us for a time-sensitive event. And lucky for us, we had just enough banner material on the roll to print their job with just a few feet to spare. We had already ordered more, but it was on backorder and wasn’t going to get to us until after their event ended. So I had to be extra, extra careful that it printed properly. I stood by the printer to make sure it was printing correctly and rolled it loosely as it came out to prevent the printed side from dragging over the floor.
After it was printed, I took it to the trimmer to gently hand-trim the white edges. It genuinely took me half an hour to make sure my cuts were straight and that I didn’t scuff the printed side. Last was the grommet punch, which is where things started to go wrong.
The boss was watching me do this, periodically guiding away oblivious customers who were trying to place an order with an employee who was very obviously busy. Then he notices it.
Boss: “What happened here?”
Me: *Panicking because I was nearing the finish line with my work.* “What? Where?”
Boss: “The printer left a blue streak across the banner.”
Me: *Calming down.* “That’s a lens flare. I pointed it out to the customer, and he said it’s supposed to be there. It’s a part of the design.”
Boss: *Scrunches face.* “It doesn’t look right to me. I can use a marker to make it blend in with the black background.”
Me: “It does look better on the screen, but it’s going to be hanging up really high. The customer tried to get a higher resolution PDF for us, but they couldn’t get it to render without their computer crashing.”
Boss: “Believe me, when he sees how I fixed their banner, he’ll love it.”
Me: “Please don’t. He specifically said that he wanted that lens flare. He worked really hard to get that file to us like this.”
Boss: “I don’t—”
Me: “I’m begging you, please don’t. At least wait until he sees the banner first before doing anything with it. I don’t have enough material to reprint if he doesn’t like it.”
Boss: “Okay. But I know he’s going to hate this thing. When he stops by, offer to draw a mini section with the marker to show him how it would look better.”
By then, I’ve finished the banner, rolled it up, and stored it away for pick up. The boss drops the topic and goes to help the next customer.
At that point, I am exhausted. I had just spent an hour wrestling with a fifteen-pound pile of vinyl fabric as it printed, unrolling and rerolling it multiple times to get it cut and grommeted. My stomach was growling, telling me I was late for my break.
I’m sure you all can already figure out what was going to happen.
By the time my fifteen-minute paid break was over, I emerged from the break room to discover that my boss had already unrolled the banner, draped it across the front counter, and was having a go at it with a marker.
And it looked bad. The shiny black marker he had used was a huge contrast to the muted black of the printed background. And the line as wiggly as the Mississippi River. There were scuff marks from where it had collided with the metal wastebasket next to the counter. More marks from where the buttons on his sleeves had dragged across the print image. Crimp marks from where the banner had folded over itself while he was moving it. Parts of the ink had been smudged where he had been pawing at it as well, smearing it into the white print.
Me: “Did the customer approve this when I was on break?”
Boss: “Look at how great this looks! He’ll never be able to tell that there was a printing error on his banner.”
Me: “That wasn’t a printing error. It was a part of the design. He’s going to refuse to pay for that.”
Boss: “Well. We’ll see when he picks it up. My shift’s over, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Me: *Internally.* “I’m going to have to give him a refund.”
And I did have to refund it. The customer was just as perplexed as I was when I related to him what had happened. Luckily, the customer was a regular, was familiar with how the bosses could get, and was on friendly terms with me. And because the boss wasn’t around, we both made fun of his antics to blow off our mutually derived frustrations. Including jokes about how I should have strapped the banner to my body like it was a newborn baby while I was on break.
