Hardley Normal Photocenter Tales - "Green is not green" & others

[TopEndDave]

These stories all happened while I was working in the photocentre at Hardley Normal.

I traveled all the way from ...
This happened when the Fujifilm printer had run out of 6 inch wide paper. This would not had been a problem if we were in any other capital city as we could send someone to pick up the paper from Fujifilm but Adelaide is about 3,000KM (1,850 miles) from Darwin. We had ordered up a pallet of paper and other supplies but it had not arrived yet.

In walks the SC with three kids, she looks at the signs that we don't have 6" paper and comes up to the photocentre.

SC: "I want to get 6x4 prints"
Me: "I am sorry but we are out of 6 inch wide paper"
SC: "When is it coming in?"
Me: "Sorry but I don't know."
SC: "This is not good enough, I traveled here all the way from Palmerston."

Palmerston is about 10 kilometers from the store. Like the City or any other suburb. I live in Palmerston and the worst it had take me to get home from that job was 30 minutes. That only occurred when there was an accident or the monsoon had dumped enough water to flood the road.

Me: "I will get a manager to handle this".

So I got a manager to who made her go away (and without freebies). During this conversation her kids were busy destroying the displays, kicking the cabinets and pulling down signs. If she had said "I had to travel all this way these demons." then I might have felt some compassion. Her children were some of the worst behaved I had ever seen in the store and they were all school aged.

A few weeks later had a similar incident without the suck when a couple came up as the printer was down for maintenance.

Nice person: "Can I get some photos printed? I drove all the way from Adelaide River (100 kilometres away) to print them"
Me: "I am sorry but the printer will not be ready for about an hour"
NP: "That is okay, we will go and have lunch at the restaurant next door."

They came back an hour later and printed their photos with no fuss.

The green is not green
This one started off as a Sucky Customer but I was actually able to turn her around to being nice. The customer was a professional photographer printing off multiple copies of 8x12 prints of sports teams. It started during a busy period when the printer was not working quite right (I hadn't worked out the correct maintenance routines).

She approached me and the conversation went like this:
PP: Pro Photographer
Me: Me of course.

PP: "My prints are wrong"
Me: "What is wrong with the prints?" - I hate vague problem descriptions
PP: "The green is not green"

I had not seen the prints at this point and thought that the printer had really stuffed up.

Me: "What colour is the green?"
PP: "It is green but not green" - okay, so we are going nowhere with this one.
Me: "Can I look at the print please?"

PP then shows me a print with a sporting team posing on a field of green grass. It looked normal and I was being to wonder if I had gone colour blind.

Me: "I can't see the problem"
PP: "I adjust the photos in photoshop to balance out the colours and this green is not correct"

Suddenly I understood the problem, the customer was expecting a certain shade of green and the printer was not supplying. Now the store owner had instructed that this customer was the ones we wanted at the photocenter as they printed large prints which had about a 90% profit margin as oppose to the 10% margin on standard prints.

I checked the computer and noticed that the paper had not been calibrated recently. Whoever put the job though had ignored the computer when it wanted to calibrate the paper.

Me: "I am going to calibrate the paper and do the prints again. Is that okay?"
PP: "Okay"

The computer spat out the print and I showed it to PP.

PP: "That is very close but not quite"
Me: "Have you tried adjusting the colours on the kiosk?"
PP: "Can you show me how?"

And everything was good. PP got prints that matched the quality that she wanted and become a good customer. The only hassle that I had afterwards was that she wanted me to do her prints no matter what I was doing. For I was willing to calibrate the paper before doing her prints no matter when it had last been done.

It still gets me though that green was not green.

When the colours are bad
I had the misfortune of finding out what happens when the developer gets contaminated. A coworker and I had done monthly maintenance that morning and I left him to do the final paper calibration when the printer warmed up. I was now the returns officer and had other duties to do. He came up to me stating that the calibration strip was failing. This sometimes happened and you just do another strip and it is good. He comes back about 30 minutes later with the bad news that it still isn't working and should the strip be brown.

I shoot out to the printer and the background of the strip is brown instead of white. Panic time. I call Fujifilm tech support and the person at the other end goes "That happens sometimes. Do another strip and let me know what happens" and hangs up. A few phone calls back and forward it hits knock off time at the call center, our printer is not working and the next day was Saturday.

I get in on Saturday (it was my day off) and get through to the on-call tech who states what I suspected, the developer is contaminated. I had to find the emergency kit with the concentrates for the fluids, empty the printer, clean it and put new developer, fixer and rinse into it. This was done using the instruction manual and no help from the tech because the closest tech was 3,000 kilometers away. (Not long after that they trained the locally based X-ray tech to do the photoprinters as well.)

The owner kept coming out of his office to check on progress. Some SC's insisted upon complaining even though I am trying to get it going again and each complaint forced me to stop work. At one point an SC goes over to the owner about how "Upset they are that the printer is not working". The owner's response was "You think that you are upset? I am devastated every time I see the hood go up on the printer." The customers went away and left me alone to fix the printer.

Next time I will do some stories from the tech bay. A combination of sucky customers trying to return items, get tech support for imaginary problems and managers with spines.

[PepperElf]

The customer was a professional photographer printing off multiple copies of 8x12 prints of sports teams.

Heh this reminds me of my boyfriend... mainly cos he does professional photography on the side, but has also worked in a camera store making prints. So he's literally gone in, handed the film to the technician and said what settings he wanted the machine set to for the proper color balance... (though the last time he did that i think he also had to tell them *how* to do the settings too, heh)

[EricKei]

(though the last time he did that i think he also had to tell them *how* to do the settings too, heh)

This doesn't really surprise me -- unless he was at a really nice Camera & film shop, that is -- if it was a drugstore or superstore, I imagine that most employees consider themselves lucky if they get trained on anything at all before being thrown to the wolves. Even at a specialty shop, training may not always be adequate -- then again, not every customer is a pro, nor someone else who would actually give a damn, either

[ArcticChicken]

Maybe the green lady was having a brain fart? Sometimes I wind up in a situation where I cannot figure out how to use words to describe what I mean. Of course, that's also accompanied by a lot of hand waving and frustrated noise, also, swearing.

[Reyneth]

Oh wow that brings back memories.

One time my Frontier (yeah "mine" b/c I was the main lab person for the store) went all wonky and needed all the chemicals messed with because paper jams had created major contaminations when my idiot coworkers didn't know how to clear it. I walked into work, manager gave me the rundown, I went back out the door to get spare dirty jeans and stuff that I happened to have with me because I was going to my mom's that night and had laundry to do.

I knew very well we were supposed to wear gloves and I did when I was really digging into the workings, but not for the more routine stuff. I still have a brown spot embedded in my palm - I think I had a scrape and it got in under the skin. It's been there at least 8 years.......

When I first started working in a photo lab, we had an optical printer so you looked at each negative while printing for light/dark and color correction. I was naive and didn't quite realize what I was in for until I had a roll with a large woman and a motorcycle and no clothing items. Ugh!

Our store policy was "don't print it if you don't feel comfortable and see if anyone else will otherwise the customer is SOL" unless it was something blatantly illegal. Then at a different store we would do the police's evidence photos, that was interesting.

[TopEndDave]

Oh wow that brings back memories.
When I first started working in a photo lab, we had an optical printer so you looked at each negative while printing for light/dark and color correction. I was naive and didn't quite realize what I was in for until I had a roll with a large woman and a motorcycle and no clothing items. Ugh!

While my store didn't have an optical printer it didn't stop me from seeing prints of people without clothes. Anybody standing near to the printer could see prints coming off.

One customer printed off the photos of his fishing trip with a bunch of friends and two strippers. Those prints were interesting and his friend with him was suddenly upset that he had missed the trip.

Another customer we had was a court official printing photos of naked women that was required for a court case. The judge had sent him to get the photos during the lunch recess.

[telecom_goddess]

Makes me glad I have a digital slr camera....no prints to worry about at all ...and anything I do want to print I can do at home on my printer.

[laborcat]

Another customer we had was a court official printing photos of naked women that was required for a court case. The judge had sent him to get the photos during the lunch recess.

See, I don't know if we could even print this at my store. Last time I checked it was pretty strict what we could and could not print. We'd probably have to get an affidavit from the judge or something to get them done in that circumstance.

Though we have had some pretty interesting "borderline" cases, especially when Mark was still working there. He made sure everyone saw the interesting stuff. God I miss him,

[TopEndDave]

Makes me glad I have a digital slr camera....no prints to worry about at all ...and anything I do want to print I can do at home on my printer.

What I forgot to mention is that the Photocenter only did prints from digital cameras. So people doing prints of images that are not for everyone to see should have used a printer at home. Some people didn't seem to care. Luckily we had no really bad images come through.

[fireheart]

What I forgot to mention is that the Photocenter only did prints from digital cameras. So people doing prints of images that are not for everyone to see should have used a printer at home. Some people didn't seem to care. Luckily we had no really bad images come through.

There is maybe one or two places in Ausland that still do film, but 3/4 places have the self-serve kiosks set up so people can print out their digital photos.

[dragon_wings]

Our photocenter had a guy come in with pix from a human vs train collision. Apparently he was with the train company getting prints for the incident report or something. All out photo techs are female and all of them nearly got sick developing those. The store manager had to talk to him. I later asked her about them and she about turned green in memory.