Student Photographer Needed in Richmond VA

[KG4CGC]

http://richmond.craigslist.org/evg/5666343492.html

I believe we have a photog having a rant at a bride-zilla. Funny stuff.

Anyone have a rant story related to their profession?

[PA5COR]

> shaking head and slowly backing off< ;)

[NQ6U]

Wish I'd kept a copy of the ad I saw a few years back. It was for a graphic designer but the requirements were absurdly steep--a bunch of different software packages, a couple of programming languages including SQL, stuff like that. Pay? $8/hr.

[KD8TUT]

I do....

In 1994 I took a short lived job with a pre press and lithopgraphy supplier who had their own field engineers. I handled the then infant digital systems.

Got an emergency call at 6am that a Rainbow Proofer had failed in St. Joseph MI (close to where I live now). So I drove from Chicago and got there at 8am (their time) and fixed the problem (trivial).

About ten minutes into my ride back to Chicago, the phone in my car rings and it's one of the guys in the office. There's a very angry customer with a malfunctioning Viper RIP (raster image processor) and I need to give him a call.

So I call the guy and he begins screaming at me full force over the phone. I'm trying to help the guy and he just keeps getting louder. I try and give him tips of things to check.... but this idiot is screaming about his service contract and that he wanted service within an hour.

Well the idiot was in Eagle River WI- so normally I wouldn't work with him because there was an engineer for these systems in Madison WI.

Called the office and found out he did not have a service contract. I figured this would be a dead issue, and I'd finish supervising a RIP installation in one of the plants that printed Playboy north of Chicago (Doing color calibration was always an interesting experience for that client!!!).

That pleasure- was not to be. The angry client insisted on someone looking at his RIP that day, he was willing to pay, and the Madison engineer had the flu. This would mean a billable 14 hour round trip drive- which the client approved.

So I called him again to see if I could walk him through a few things- and he just continued screaming at me.

On my way I went.

I arrive 7 hours later and I'm met in the parking lot by "the idiot" who decided to usher me into the office by yelling into my left ear until I was standing in front of the computer in question. He described the problem to me again.

So I plugged the keyboard cable back in, had him sign the paperwork, laughed in his face- and left.

The bill, which he paid, was close to $5000.00.

Would have stayed with that company, they really were doing some bleeding edge sort of things with direct to plate and other technologies. But after 9 months I was headhunted out to a fortune 100 company.

But I'll never forget that guy.

[NQ6U]

I worked in pre-press a bit—talk about headaches. This was back in the early to mid-Nineties. Most of the work we did came from Mac users, most our troubles came from people using MS Word on Windows. We finally made up a "Microsoft Word Disclaimer" that we made them sign before we'd agree to accept their files for output. Basically, it said "we can't guarantee what you get back is going to look at all like it does on your screen and if it doesn't, that's your problem not ours."

[KD8TUT]

I worked in pre-press a bit—talk about headaches. This was back in the early to mid-Nineties. Most of the work we did came from Mac users, most our troubles came from people using MS Word on Windows. We finally made up a "Microsoft Word Disclaimer" that we made them sign before we'd agree to accept their files for output. Basically, it said "we can't guarantee what you get back is going to look at all like it does on your screen and if it doesn't, that's your problem not ours."

Yup- the screaming guy was on a Mac and the culprit was an ADB cable.

We had people using a lot of Quark- some of the bigger houses were playing with direct to plate.

[n6hcm]

Wish I'd kept a copy of the ad I saw a few years back. It was for a graphic designer but the requirements were absurdly steep--a bunch of different software packages, a couple of programming languages including SQL, stuff like that. Pay? $8/hr.

you know what's fucked up? in a town with a big university you can pretty much get away with this bullshit.

[WØTKX]

Interesting, I worked for Lasermaster back in the day.

Man, Adobe hated us. :mrgreen:

[koØm]

I do....

In 1994 I took a short lived job with a pre press and lithopgraphy supplier who had their own field engineers. I handled the then infant digital systems.

Got an emergency call at 6am that a Rainbow Proofer had failed in St. Joseph MI (close to where I live now). So I drove from Chicago and got there at 8am (their time) and fixed the problem (trivial).

About ten minutes into my ride back to Chicago, the phone in my car rings and it's one of the guys in the office. There's a very angry customer with a malfunctioning Viper RIP (raster image processor) and I need to give him a call.

So I call the guy and he begins screaming at me full force over the phone. I'm trying to help the guy and he just keeps getting louder. I try and give him tips of things to check.... but this idiot is screaming about his service contract and that he wanted service within an hour.

Well the idiot was in Eagle River WI- so normally I wouldn't work with him because there was an engineer for these systems in Madison WI.

Called the office and found out he did not have a service contract. I figured this would be a dead issue, and I'd finish supervising a RIP installation in one of the plants that printed Playboy north of Chicago (Doing color calibration was always an interesting experience for that client!!!).

That pleasure- was not to be. The angry client insisted on someone looking at his RIP that day, he was willing to pay, and the Madison engineer had the flu. This would mean a billable 14 hour round trip drive- which the client approved.

So I called him again to see if I could walk him through a few things- and he just continued screaming at me.

On my way I went.

I arrive 7 hours later and I'm met in the parking lot by "the idiot" who decided to usher me into the office by yelling into my left ear until I was standing in front of the computer in question. He described the problem to me again.

So I plugged the keyboard cable back in, had him sign the paperwork, laughed in his face- and left.

The bill, which he paid, was close to $5000.00.

Would have stayed with that company, they really were doing some bleeding edge sort of things with direct to plate and other technologies. But after 9 months I was headhunted out to a fortune 100 company.

But I'll never forget that guy.

Twenty years earlier, you could have been the Technical Representative for the Xerox Corporation. (Who remembers Ladder schematics and Relay control?)

Back in 1974, there was no Internet, and secretaries used Typewriters with carbon paper and, made copies on the "Xerox Machine". The Fax machine was in it's infancy and, it ran over Long Distance Telephone Lines; one page took over a minute to send. Large reports were sent by Courier or snail mail. When the office copier / duplicator went down, the whole company hit a stand still.

The service contract stated that the customer would be contracted with 15 minutes of the call and, a "Tech-Rep" would be onsite within 2 hours; nobody liked the "Z-Rox-Man". As I signed in, I could hear, "Here comes Mr. Fix-it" or, "Oh it's you again" or, "That piece of crap machine always breaks when you need it most" etc. - ad-nausea-um.

No matter how soon I arrived onsite, I should have gotten there sooner!
No matter how long I stayed onsite, it took to long to fix the problem!
No matter how long it ran in between breakdowns, it should have ran longer!
Doesn't matter that you dropped paper clips into machine or didn't properly clear the paper jam, it's the machine fault, it's just "No Good."
And, the cycle starts again with a phone call which sends a phone number to my pager.

.

[WØTKX]

I used to 'eff with the MS-DOS errors to get after certain staff members (usually sales) because it was FUN!

For instance, "Bad Command or File Name" got changed to "Learn to spell right, Tim!"

"File Not Found" became "Hoplessly Lost" :evil:

[K6CPO]

http://richmond.craigslist.org/evg/5666343492.html

I believe we have a photog having a rant at a bride-zilla. Funny stuff.

Anyone have a rant story related to their profession?

This particular bit has been circulating around the photography forums for years...