Photo lab fun!

[Linda]

I guess this is a sighting...I was told about it by an engineer who was out to fix my photo lab today.

He only had one other call locally and he thought it was amusing so shared it with me.

A guy at another local lab was doing some routine maintenence on the processor lab. These things have chemical tanks which get drained about once a month and refreshed. The tap to open the tank is a quarter turn, so that the side panel will not fit back on if the tap is still open. So Mr genius opened the tap, emptied the tank, and then turned the tap back to closed, a quarter turn the other way.

Mr genius then decided that a quarter turn couldn't possibly be enough to close the tank - even though that's all he had done to open it - so decided that another half turn would be sufficient. Said tap wouldn't budge. Now at this point, most sane people would have taken the hint and thought "Ooh, a quarter turn must be right! Not our friend Mr Genius. He decided to take some sort of tool to the tap to assist it in the turning - a wrench or something, I don't know exactly what. He managed to completely snap the tap off in the open position, which means the tank cannot be filled, so the processor is completely unusable.

That would be bad enough, but who was said genius?

<Local photo lab>'s regional manager.

And what was he doing when trying to turn off the tap?

Leading a regional training course for new employees entitled "Taking care of our lab equipment"

[Becks]

How perfect!!!!!!

I bet he pulled a "Do as I say, not as I do" afterwards.

[Reyneth]

That would be bad enough, but who was said genius?

<Local photo lab>'s regional manager.

And what was he doing when trying to turn off the tap?

Leading a regional training course for new employees entitled "Taking care of our lab equipment"

Hmmm, looks like RM hasn't done maintenance in years. When I was in photo lab with *big company* I did it so often that I bet I could do all of it now with my eyes closed - 3 years later. I'm sure some peon in his store would have been better qualified to teach that course!

I would have loved to explain to customers that we couldn't do photos because the RM broke the machine! And when they bitched, directed them to his vm.

[rts]

Hmmm, looks like RM hasn't done maintenance in years. When I was in photo lab with *big company* I did it so often that I bet I could do all of it now with my eyes closed - 3 years later. I'm sure some peon in his store would have been better qualified to teach that course!

I would have loved to explain to customers that we couldn't do photos because the RM broke the machine! And when they bitched, directed them to his vm.

Aint this the stinking truth. Most of the time, the big shots are more responsible for declining numbers, bad shortcuts and sub-standard quality than the labs themselves.

[crazylegs]

When ever I was in the Mini Lab we had more mismatched orders, misfiled orders and badly cut negatives whenever we had management in the Lab, and the more management in said lab, the more mistakes made!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My company got rid of all its one-hour machines last year. Now we just have the Kodak kiosk where you print photos from your digital camera or memory card.

Nobody misses it. That thing was very maintenance-intensive.

People who still use film cameras can still drop their film off to be processed and have it back a few days later.