Things that utterly irk me

[DCurry]

Had a font missing on a job (big surprise). Called customer, asked them to email it to me. Got the email, and attached to it was an alias of the font!

[prepress_brillance_43]

Yeah, I've had artsts send me CD's with alias' burned onto them, and when I called to tell them they said, "what's an alias?"

"IDIOT!" -Napolean Dynomite

[Ratbag]

Anyone who makes you do a pussy little letterhead remake type of job because it's urgent, it uses some custom font which 3 different people attempt to match but can't, that includes one of those typeface expert types, you waste about 3-4 hours on this job becasue for some reason priority has been put on this one over anything regular that actually makes money and goes easy, but you get it out and -
the next day the client suddenly finds a disc with the original on.

[pcmodem]

What about rushing a job they need right away. Only to find out they didn't need it right away.

[Eman]

Had a great one yesterday. The designer actually gave me a choice for what she will create her black only catalog in....Publisher or AI6. Told her sorry, don't have Publisher, but AI will be fine as long as she sends all fonts & images. She asked if a list of them is what I want. After explaining to her 3 times, just told her our camera is still working & send in camera ready work.

[pressman2]

or spending half a day, "fixing" that job from hell, that came in five minutes ago, is ready to rip (except for a couple of minor changes), needs to go on press right now (press crew is waiting for it), and has to ship this afternoon. Finally correct those MINOR changes and get it to press. Then like 15 seconds after the press shuts down, clients calls to say, oops we put the wrong date in the file; it doesn't need to ship out until next week. (with another change of course) :harhar: :harhar: :harhar: :harhar: :harhar: :harhar: [/i]

[santa]

Had a catalog with 425 book titles each with a picture. "Designer" supplied Quark 3.2 with no pictures. Asked for the Artwork and was supplied with the scans, only to find out that the "designer" copied the photoshop desktop preview and pasted them into each picture box and resized them.

Did not even now it was possible to do it, but they did!

[4starslave]

being the only person in the department handling my regular work, technical problems from everyone in the shop, dealing with equipment that likes to act up, solving problems with the "easy" jobs that come in and then having the csr or salesman walk in wondering why the job they broght in isn't done yet. :x
well, what are ya going to do? all i can do is smile and keep working.

[hotmetal]

It just occurred to me: those of us reading and contributing to this and other prepress forums are the ones who actually try to do stuff right and have kept on learning about this stuff as the years have gone by.

Meanwhile, in this and the last shop I was in, there are a half-dozen operators who seem to have learned just enough to get by (or get themselves in trouble) about 5 or 6 years ago and haven't bothered to learn much of anything since. InDesign? What's that? Why do I have to use OSX, OS8 works just fine. Can I go ride my dirtbike now?

Yet, to management, we are just interchangeable chimps, a dime-a-dozen, interchangeable and easily replaceable.

Hard week? Yep. I keep having to fix jobs done by guys younger than me who have worked here longer and get paid more. Almost summer. Maybe I should go back to driving an ice cream truck. Out there in sugar-overdose land you can be your own boss!

[Sparky]

hotmetal ,,,(from the '60s) "right on" I keep thinking my boss wants to bring his 68 Dodge Charger to the Daytona 500 and try to be competitive 8O 8O 8O

He just doesn't see the belief that at trying to keep up with modern technology will keep him in the forefront of competitive pricing :wink: