A customer wanted us to stay open an extra hour so he could pick up his business cards. I offered to ship them to his office overnight, but he refused.

Client: “You know, it’s inconsiderate to be closed at 5:00 pm. Some people just can’t fit that around their schedules…”

His speech became inaudible due to some loud, bassy noises.

Me: “I’m sorry, you’re not coming in clearly. Where are you?”

Client: “I’m at the theatre. The movie doesn’t even end until 5:30 pm. Case in point!”

Me: “Indeed.”

I’m working on a very complicated print project for a client who wants daily updates on my progress.

Me: “Here’s the latest update of [Promotional Magazine].”

Client: “On page three, you’ve put our web address. Is that clickable?”

Me: “It’s a printed magazine.”

Client: “So, it’s not clickable?”

Me: “It’s a printed magazine.”

Client: “Oh, yeah! I get it! Can you add instructions for readers to write the address down on a piece of paper?”

Me: “It’s a printed magazine.”

Once upon a time, I worked at a print shop that mostly specialized in T-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. I specifically worked on larger orders. If you needed T-shirts printed for your softball team, church group, school function, fundraiser, or whatever, I was happy to help make your vision a reality.

Bear in mind that I have only minimal design expertise. Prospective customers would send me an image of what they’d like on their shirts, and I had enough ability to create a reasonable mock-up of what you’d get based on your specification, but the actual design team would spiff up the files so they would meet the requirements of the printers. Each customer got one free hour of design assistance, and if they wanted more, they could pay for it. It was not expensive, and many customers took advantage of this service so they could get their logos and mascots looking perfect before printing.

However. About once a month, I would get a customer who believed I could divine images out of their brain and put them on a shirt. This interaction was particularly difficult.

Stage #1: The Emails. This email chain more or less took up an entire eight-hour day. To summarize:

Client: “So, we need 150 shirts. They need to be pink for breast cancer and have an owl on them. Can they be done in three weeks?”

Me: “That turnaround time is reasonable, but there are a few things we need first. What color pink do you want? I’ve attached a few examples of our popular pink T-shirts. [Local Women’s Charity] used the first example for their recent breast cancer fundraiser. Also, I will need an image file of the owl you would like to use. We recommend [file type, file size].”

Client: “I have a pink T-shirt at home that we want to match.”

Me: “If you can tell me the brand, I can contact our supplier to order the same T-shirts, if they are available. Unfortunately, we don’t keep a sample of every option in our small warehouse, but I’d be happy to create a custom order for you.” 

Client: “I cut the tag out.”

Me: “I’m afraid if we don’t know the brand, you’ll need to choose from the brands offered by our supplier. Which of the samples would work best for you?”

Client: “I need pink.”

Me: “I understand. Please take a look at the attachments I sent you and let me know which pink shirt sample best meets your vision.”

Client: “What about the owl?”

Me: “As soon as I receive your artwork and know which pink shirt you’d like to use, I can create a mock-up of your final design.”

After a day of silence, imagine my surprise when a person walked into our office carrying a faded, stained pink T-shirt and a shower curtain.

The faded, stained pink T-shirt was somewhat understandable, but why the shower curtain? The owl they wanted on the shirt was part of the pattern. They wanted me to photocopy the owl from the shower curtain onto 150 pink shirts, right then, while they waited.

It took two designers, a manager, and the owner of the company to explain that we couldn’t do that. We walked her through the production floor to show her the machines that printed and how a file needed to be uploaded, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t understand why we couldn’t just run her shower curtain through the printer and transfer the owl — which was about two inches square — into a full-size chest print, about eight inches square, with a bunch of logos under it.

Now, I don’t expect everyone to appreciate the ins and outs of digital imaging, because I didn’t fully grasp it myself. But this particular person was a manager of a digital radiology clinic, and they were attempting to shove a shower curtain into a DTG printer to transfer the image to a shirt.

Yes, they got their shirts. One of the designers happened to know this person’s partner and reduced their design fees just for them. They hand-drew a replica of the owl, changed it enough to avoid copyright issues, created a lovely PNG file of it, and had it ready to go.

Also, they went with white shirts, after all.

Related:
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 6
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 5
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 4
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 3
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 2

I work for a screen print shop. People send us their logos, and before we go to print, our designer makes a quick digital mockup to show the clients how their designs will look on a shirt.

A client sent us their company’s logo, and we sent them back the proof. The client called within a minute.

Client: *Sounding a little unhappy* “Hi. Yeah, the proof you sent us? Um, it looks okay, but when I zoom in, it’s really pixelated.”

Me: “Correct. We sent you a jpeg; all jpegs look pixelated when you zoom in.”

Client: “Right, but… Well, I guess what I’m saying is… will the shirts look like that once they’re printed?”

Me: “No.”

Client: “Because this is the proof of how they’ll turn out.”

Me: “No, screen printing requires very precise lines. This is just to give you an idea of how the logo will look once it’s on the shirt. We used the design we were initially sent, but if there’s a different one we should be using…”

Client: *Not convinced in the least* “You know, we had a graphic designer actually do a whole mock-up of it already, exactly the way it should look. I’ll just send you that.”

The designer’s mock-up was, of course, a jpeg of their logo on a shirt. She must not have zoomed in that time.

I work for a printing company that mostly prints custom signs. Customers can either pay to have somebody design a custom sign, buy a premade one, or use our website to create their own sign using various templates and assets. A customer can add one symbol and add their own text. Before a customer submits the design, it shows them digital proofs, and then the customer ticks a box to say they have looked at it and approved it. Once the customer checks that box and submits it, the designs come to me and my team.

When we get a design, if anything looks a little off, such as an obvious typo, we can call to confirm with the customer at our discretion. We are not required to do this as the customer has already approved the proofs, but most of the time, we do call and check.

It’s a quiet day, and I get a design through for a hazard sign which has the symbol for a slippery floor, but the text reads, “Warning: surface wet when wet.” I figure this is an error, so I call up the customer.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name] from [Printing Company]. I’m just starting on your order, but I wanted to check—”

Customer: “Why the h*** are you calling me?! Just get on with it. I need the signs now!“

Me: “I am going to get right on them, but I just wanted to check because I think there might have been a mistake—”

Customer: “I put that order together myself! I don’t make mistakes!”

Me: “Okay, so to confirm, your sign should say, ‘Wet when wet’?”

Customer: “Yes!”

Me: “Not ‘Slippery when wet’?”

Customer: “No!”

I confirmed several times that his sign currently said, “Wet when wet,” and asked if it should be “Slippery when wet.” The customer confirmed the sign was correct as it was and repeated that he didn’t make mistakes. I thanked him for his time. The customer screamed at me to get the job done or he was going to sue and then hung up.

I made a note on his account and went to work.

A few weeks later, my manager approached me to say we’d had a complaint. You guessed it: it was the same customer screaming at us that the signs were wrong. They should have said, “Slippery when wet.” The customer was demanding a full refund and wanted them remade and sent out free of charge. The manager had seen my note and asked me for more details. The call recording and signed proofs showed that we were not at fault, so the customer was denied a refund because it was his error and we wouldn’t be able to resell the signs.

The customer insisted we had messed up, not him, and his complaint got escalated up to the highest point it could, but he still didn’t get his refund because we could prove he was the one who made a mistake.

Two weeks later, we received another order from him, this time with the correct wording, but the customer included a passive-aggressive note warning us not to “mess up again”. My manager and I had a good laugh about that one.

I wonder what he did with the fifty “wet when wet” signs?