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We've been dealing with a particularly difficult woman lately who has been nothing but trouble since she started placing orders.
For context, my current assignment is at a corporate print shop where - among other things - we produce product manuals for high end medical equipment. As can be imagined, it is very important that everything is done exactly right, as these will be shipped all over the world.
This woman....she has so much trouble with basic reading and verbal comprehension it makes me wonder how she didn't flunk her way out of school by 6th grade.
Here are a few things she just can't grasp:
"I don't understand why you can't just download the files from [internal system]!! Why do I have to provide them?!"
This one is simple, and yet she just doesn't get it: we DO NOT have access to that system! Whining won't do anything to change this.
"Why can't I just submit a single ticket for all the books I need?!"
*Every* time she orders anything, she doesn't bother entering any specs; she just attaches a single page PO with multiple line items, each for an entirely different manual and each with different quantities!
If the different items had identical specs - including quantity - then yeah you could do that. But they aren't. Each one is similar, yes, but still different. Different book = different job = separate ticket. The system is not designed to accommodate entirely different jobs in a single ticket. Trying to force it through will - at best - cause error messages to pop up and at worst will utterly and completely screw up the billing. Plus, if anyone needs to refer to that ticket in the future, they'll never be able to figure out what was done.
"What do you meeeaaaan you can't use the locked files?!" "What do you meeeaaan I have to sort them out?!"
So after finally wrangling the files out of her, she sent all the different files for 7 books in a single zip file, many of which were locked down.
Ugh....really? Even if the file names were easy to follow - which they aren't - it's not up to us to sort everything out for you. And since the names are NOT named in an obvious way, we'd have to manually match up everything, which is just asking for mistakes to happen. This is the digital equivalent of giving us loose hardcopies of the manuals all thrown together in a box.
Oh, and no you can't send us locked PDFs! While we can print them, locked files cannot be manipulated in any way, which means we can't set the job up to print the chapter tabs automatically....or set up the chapter breaks....or anything else really. And if it's read-only we can't use it at all.
"What do you meeeeaaaan they won't be ready tomorrow?!?!"
Well, you asked for 250 copies, and each one is about 250 sheets. The printing alone will take 30+ hours with the tabs, not including the time to set the job up and then bind the books. So no, you can't get the full order tomorrow. We can get you *some* tomorrow but the rest will take about a week.
Oh, and we checked with her manager, and found out those 250 books should've been ordered 8 weeks prior!
Every. Single. Time. She orders. We have to deal with this BS.
For context, my current assignment is at a corporate print shop where - among other things - we produce product manuals for high end medical equipment. As can be imagined, it is very important that everything is done exactly right, as these will be shipped all over the world.
This woman....she has so much trouble with basic reading and verbal comprehension it makes me wonder how she didn't flunk her way out of school by 6th grade.
Here are a few things she just can't grasp:
"I don't understand why you can't just download the files from [internal system]!! Why do I have to provide them?!"
This one is simple, and yet she just doesn't get it: we DO NOT have access to that system! Whining won't do anything to change this.
"Why can't I just submit a single ticket for all the books I need?!"
*Every* time she orders anything, she doesn't bother entering any specs; she just attaches a single page PO with multiple line items, each for an entirely different manual and each with different quantities!
If the different items had identical specs - including quantity - then yeah you could do that. But they aren't. Each one is similar, yes, but still different. Different book = different job = separate ticket. The system is not designed to accommodate entirely different jobs in a single ticket. Trying to force it through will - at best - cause error messages to pop up and at worst will utterly and completely screw up the billing. Plus, if anyone needs to refer to that ticket in the future, they'll never be able to figure out what was done.
"What do you meeeaaaan you can't use the locked files?!" "What do you meeeaaan I have to sort them out?!"
So after finally wrangling the files out of her, she sent all the different files for 7 books in a single zip file, many of which were locked down.
Ugh....really? Even if the file names were easy to follow - which they aren't - it's not up to us to sort everything out for you. And since the names are NOT named in an obvious way, we'd have to manually match up everything, which is just asking for mistakes to happen. This is the digital equivalent of giving us loose hardcopies of the manuals all thrown together in a box.
Oh, and no you can't send us locked PDFs! While we can print them, locked files cannot be manipulated in any way, which means we can't set the job up to print the chapter tabs automatically....or set up the chapter breaks....or anything else really. And if it's read-only we can't use it at all.
"What do you meeeeaaaan they won't be ready tomorrow?!?!"
Well, you asked for 250 copies, and each one is about 250 sheets. The printing alone will take 30+ hours with the tabs, not including the time to set the job up and then bind the books. So no, you can't get the full order tomorrow. We can get you *some* tomorrow but the rest will take about a week.
Oh, and we checked with her manager, and found out those 250 books should've been ordered 8 weeks prior!
Every. Single. Time. She orders. We have to deal with this BS.
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