To this day, I wonder how I endured working for this tightfisted, uncaring company. I suppose it was because I didn’t have much to compare it to. My father’s words often came to me during especially difficult moments: “If it were fun, they wouldn’t call it work, would they?”
For starters, we, the customer service girls, were sequestered in one room of the entire plant. Each of us had a number of clients to attend to and our main responsibility was making sure that their work went through without a hitch. This would be a relatively easy task if our company wasn’t such a sloppy mess. Though we were a mid-sized printing company, we carried a few surprisingly well-known clients. Our customers were mainly in the New York and Philadelphia areas and all were very demanding.
There were approximately 5 CSRs, including yours truly, conducting our business in this small space, our desks butting up against each other. Also in this room was our quality controller, Eddie. This was an interesting choice on behalf of the owners. Why not stick the guy who requires a reasonable amount of peace and quiet in order to successfully do his job in the same room with the chaotic day-to-day lives of 5 CSRs? I forgot to add that Eddie had very little patience and spent nearly every second of the day either cursing the company for its shoddy work or cursing us for the noise that was necessary to conduct our jobs. “Can we do ANYTHING right? Who the hell are we, Shitty Printers, U.S.A.?!”
The only folks who had any privacy were the salesmen and upper management. Each had either a quiet cubicle on the other side of the plant or a fully furnished office with a door. This made sense, of course, since the sales staff was generally out of the office on sales calls or hanging out in our confined room, talking about the previous night’s football game.
Our general manager, Don, had an office adjacent to the hell room we worked in. Before he became the general manager of our printing company, Don sold shoes. It stands to reason, then, that his next job should be this one. During my first week on the job, Don sat me down to give me a crash course in printing. On his yellow legal-sized ruled pad, he sketched out various printing impositions: Work and Turn, Sheet Wise, Work and Tumble, etc. I had a Bachelor’s Degree and thought I was a fairly quick learner, but his lessons were all lost on me. He interjected every step with “You follow me?” or “You see what I’m saying?” I hadn’t a clue. He appeared to explain things out of sequence, and at times, I got the sensation that he himself didn’t truly grasp the concepts he was attempting to lay on me.
Over time, I grew to believe that Don was the anti-Christ. And I wasn’t alone. Like, Eddie, Don had a short fuse. It matched perfectly with his short body. Actually, Don’s torso was shaped like an ear of corn. He lacked shoulders. Sometimes, I found myself staring at him and wondering if it was some kind of odd birth defect. If you crossed Don, even if he heard from another source that you might have suggested something negative about him, it was hell to pay. There were usually two tactics he employed in order to retaliate a wrongdoer. Usually, he would call one into his office and draw the blinds. Since his office was centrally located, the “drawing of the blinds” was a very theatrical display and his audience was immediately aware that he meant business. You would see the poor so-and-so slowly swagger in the direction of the office, a mix of humiliation and pride. It was a lot like watching an inmate walk from death row to the electric chair. The longer the blinds were drawn, the more serious and heated you imagined it was. People would silently group together and whisper, everyone wondering what was taking so long. I had visions of Don reaching for his bookcase and throwing it down in a fit of rage. In reality, it was more of a power play meeting, a way for Don to assert himself and remind the offender who was boss. Don would start the meeting standing up, hands on hips, looking out his window. He would keep his back turned while he explained, in excruciating detail, why he was angry. Like a fourth grader, the pitiful sinner would have to apologize and promise not to do it again. The second method was the “straight on, drop everything and run out to the bad guy to teach him a lesson in front of everyone” approach. Imagine that you are doing your job, minding your own business, when out of nowhere, Don comes bolting at you like a cannon ball. BAM! He would use a lot of body language – fierce finger pointing, arms flailing, the whole kit and caboodle. Nine out of ten times, the criminal was innocent.
Like a mob boss, Don had an informant named Henry. He operated one of the presses and everyone knew that Henry fished around for information on Don in exchange for immunity. If he screwed something up on press, so what? He found out what Larry the shipping manager said about Don. It always got him off the hook. Henry invited me out to lunch one day, but I was wise to him by this time. “So, what do you think about Don?” he asked me, slamming the bottom of a ketchup bottle. “He’s a peach, “ I responded.
For the most part, the only sense of urgency at the company existed in exchanges between CSRs and shift managers and poor Eddie who thought we were all a bunch of buffoons. Beyond that, the attitude was “I’ll get to it when I get to it.” Take, for example, Harry, the older gentlemen who operated our flatbed scanner. I once watched Harry measure and re-measure the same stinking piece of line art for an hour. Every time I checked in on this very time sensitive scanning job, Harry would look up at me, smile, wink, then get back down to the business of measuring.
As a company, we had also mastered the craft of misplacing things. Important things. Hundreds of dollars worth of film and printing proofs: Poof! Vanished. You think your work is going to go out in the morning as planned? Don’t bank on it. If the company loses the original art supplied by your client, you are up a creek, without the proverbial paddle. And it was always chalked up to mysterious forces. Ghosts on third shift lurked the plant in search of 35-millimeter slides to share with their ghost pals. “Oh, it’ll turn up,” our shift managers would say.
Since a CSR cannot explain the missing art or the blown deadlines to their clients in honest terms (“Oh, it’ll turn up” or “We’ll get to it when we get to it”), we have to whip out the book. The book is called 101 Great Lies for Printing Professionals. It contains a lot of very proven and effective fibs to feed clients and it was a great resource when our company fucked up. Each CSR had her own personal copy of the book. Much of the time, blaming technology for delays and problems in printer proofs was the best way to go. Throw a lot of “techie jargon” at your client and hope they are too busy and confused to give it any credence. A lot of folks – primarily those who had no direct contact with clients – preferred that you put the blame back on your customer. They cited lots of specific problems with digital files supplied by clients and asked you to, in essence, scold them for their ineptitude. This would be a fine solution if the problems weren’t presented the day the project was due.
The company employed two men, Barney and Jerome, whose primary jobs were to file and pull printing plates. These are large, heavy plates that are hung on presses. We used to store them in the event that a customer requested a reprint. Barney and Jerome reminded me of the two guys who sat in the audience in the Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorf, with their constant complaining and heckling. As far as I was concerned, they had the best job in the plant. File the plates, pull the plates, file, pull. What was so hard? Apparently, there was more stress to their jobs than I was aware of. Barney, who had a very unfortunate birthmark covering most of his face and a raspier voice than Burgess Meredith, would get really ticked off when approached for simple requests to pull plates (remember: this was his job). It was as though you were asking him to fork over his paycheck. The request was then followed up with an angry stomp to the plate room and grumblings under his breath. He would emerge, moments later, with your plates. Handing them over would be the civil thing to do, but Barney thought it better to ferociously slam them down on the counter, sending you a very clear message: Just in case you didn’t know, you pissed me off.
Jerome was less huffy and more fault-finding. Most of us knew better than to ask Jerome for anything, because it was usually came with a verbal list of the many things on Jerome’s plate that day. How on earth would he have time to help you? He was just too damn busy. In between, though, Jerry found a lot of time for smoke breaks and criticism. “The problem with this company is (fill in the blank).” Jerry always had a remark, an opinion or a tip. He would eavesdrop on your conversation and present you with lots of helpful advice. One time, my fellow CSR complemented me on a new pair of Chuck Taylors I had just purchased, within earshot of Jerry. “You better go out and get those Odor Eaters!” he offered.
Our clients were an interesting bunch. I had a beaut of a customer by the name of Kappy. He wore his glasses fashioned to his head by way of a wide stretchy band. He ran a product photography studio in west Philly, a real soup-to-nuts operation. Kappy not only provided photography services to his customers, he also created their catalogues and promotional materials. The graphic design arm of his business—traditional paste-up, performed the same way since the sixties—was void of all technology. His designer resembled Cousin It and smelled like patchouli, coffee and cigarettes (with a hint of pot). In fact, opening the front door to Kappy’s studio released billows of smoke ala Cheech and Chong’s van. All the employees smoked up while they worked (this included his mother, the receptionist). So addicted was Kappy, that our company’s owners permitted him to chain smoke in our plant, as he strolled through, inspecting his jobs.
Kappy was the laughing stock of the company. Even our shift managers got in on the joke by inserting Crappy, Sappy, or Flappy in place of his first name on the paperwork that circulated with his projects. Like most jokes, though, it was doomed to go too far. One of our technicians decided to airbrush “Crappy” into one of his digital images, with every intention of getting rid of it before it found its way to the shipping area. One regrettable distraction propelled the prank into the hands of Crappy himself. As luck would have it, however, Kappy missed it on the proof. Between all the smoke in the studio and the tight elastic band affixed to his head, it’s really no wonder. The blunder made it all the way on press. An enraged Kappy had some turbulent words with one of the owners after he discovered his beloved nickname on the printed, folded brochure. Crappy was not happy. Several hours after the fateful package was delivered, a technician was on route to the unemployment office.
Because our company had a reputation for substandard work, we were often forced to settle for substandard clients. We worked on several pornographic magazine covers, which I always thought was interesting. Most of the publications were the size of TV Guide and contained erotic letters, stories and adventures. I secretly wished that Kappy would get an eye full of that as he wondered through the shop.
Ironically, it was Kappy who threw me a few freelance illustration projects. I was asked to create drawings for little candy tins. A snow scene, a produce market, a women’s boutique. They were full color drawings and the final product was sent off to China where the metal was printed. To this day, I have yet to see a sample. Kappy was also a grudge holder, so upon hearing that I was going to leave the company and go back to Boston, I was essentially dead to him. He labeled me: Ingrate. His punishment to me was the deprivation of printed samples of my work.
In 1994, email was not popular. In fact, none of us had computers. Our single communication channel was the phone. I remember making my first professional call to a client. I was told to call the customer, introduce myself, and ask for clarification on one of his print jobs. Pretty straightforward stuff.
As soon as I dialed the number, I drew a complete blank. The equivalent of a shy bladder. My heart started racing and I seriously thought about hanging up and starting over. Too late. A voice on the other end responded to my call. “This is John.”
I can’t remember exactly how I butchered this call. I raced through some parts of it, stumbling on my own words. At other points, I paused, totally forgetting my purpose. I am pretty sure that I repeated some things, too. All I know for certain is that I felt mortified when put the receiver down. John, my frustrated client, gave me some advice. “Call me back when you know what you’re doing.” This was one of my first lessons in humility and a very valuable one. Confidence, even under pressure, is a must-have for project managers.
Two years after I left my darling Anytown paradise, I received a call from an old friend and fellow Shitty Printers alumni. I got out of Dodge in favor of another printing company closer to Boston, but she and I remained in contact.
“Are you sitting down?” she asked me. She then proceeded to explain, in the juiciest of details, how Don was finally canned. Shackles fell off wrists, rays of glorious light poured down from the heavens above and a band of angels began to sing. All was right with the world. Albeit the place and the demons were behind me, it was still so comforting, like bathing in a pool of sweet justice. It wasn’t one huge mistake on his part (though the story would have been far more interesting and climactic had this been so), but more a series of things: good workers who left and cited him as the main reason, incorrect paper orders placed, random loose cannon behavior. It all added up to a shiny pink slip.
In the years to come, I would encounter several Dons, Howards, and Eddies. Like a swarm of angry killer bees buzzing about my head, following me from job to job.
