So today I go into an argument with our salesman Ed Miller. Ed has been in the game for years and is almost at the age of retirement. (Aka he is a stubborn old man that thinks he is right about everything.)

Boxes Etc, one of Ed’s customers, is notorious at letting jobs fall to the waist side and then complaining about how we didn’t keep up with them. (like so many other companies in this industry) Today’s job was a meat box with a safe handling slug going to Micon to run. I sent them artwork proof on the 12th of last week. We always have Boxes sign off on the artwork and fax it over because they have screwed us so many times on changes.

Today Micon called and said they have an order on the box but they do not have the plates. I tried calling Joe to see if he wanted to order the plates and he was in the warehouse so I called Ed to tell him about the job and see if he could get in touch with Joe. Well Ed starting going on about how I shouldn’t have waited a week to get on this I should have called Joe a couple days later and yadda yadda. 

1. I have tons of customers
2. Of those tons of customers 90% of them say their jobs will be an order after I send them proof.
3. Of that 90% only 5% actually get the order and say it’s a go; where as the other has art changes and don’t get back with me on these changes for days, weeks, heck even months

so I told him it is not my jooooob to babysit his customer and make sure they order their dies when they are suppose to and if they don’t send over a signed off print card saying it’s an order it’s not my problem. All I can do is hit the ball in their court and wait for them to do whatever. 

I wasn’t mad or upset or anything like that. I just wanted him to know it’s not my fault that this crap happens all the time with those ppl and I’m not gonna sit there and be blamed for it anymore there is only so much I can do for a customer.

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Feature of the Day:

WhatTheFont is a cool site that helps you match a font from a photo or a fax. I have been using it here at ACT for four years since I have to copy company logos and their artwork it has really helped.

You have to make sure you clean up the image really nice to help it lock on what letters are what. I have found that script font or some crazy swirly fonts or something like that is really hard to find on this site.

Tips from the web site on getting the best possible match

WTF search tips from Cameron Fraser:

• The number of characters in your scanned image makes a significant difference in the accuracy of the search results.
  • Max components (characters): 50
  • If you are identifying a font that is very similar to others:
    • use as many characters as possible or a total of 25 and;
    • use characters that are unique to this font
• If possible, space the characters apart more than normal
• Max image size is 400,000 pixels (width x height)
  • ideal max. size of file containing NO descenders:
    1666 x 120 pixels
  • ideal max. size of file containing descenders:
    1250 x 160 pixels
• Scan images at 300 dpi
• Best file format: Tiff, Grayscale, 300 dpi