I can’t go into much detail on this because of the confidentiality agreement to which I am held, but this afternoon was very stressful for me.
Three fires burning simultaneously:
Fire #1) a printer who called about a job they should have had finished already. They said they couldn’t get the PDF I sent to work properly even though it had printed for them fine the day before. Could I please send again. (done) Nope. Still not working. Can you send it as an outlined EPS? (done) Nope. Still no good. We’ll try something here, they said. (I didn’t trust their abilities and made an extremely dumbed down PDF and emailed it.) Good. Works great. Thanks.
I’m feeling annoyed and frazzled by a printer who should really be able to troubleshoot this kind of stuff on their own. Frazzled also because they would phone every 5 minutes while I was either trying to get their problem solved or get to work on what I really should have been doing. Which was not…
Fire #2) A publication that was having trouble downloading an ad I had collected and FTP’d to them providing them with an easy URL to download the whole thing. They called earlier in the week asking for the native files because they do not yet support PDF submission. Apparently they don’t accept FTP submission either. Back into the fray I go, making an even dumber, dumbed down compressed file containing all of the necessary files to make the ad that they requested a full week before it was actually due. Like Fire #1 this person called several times while I was on lunch and was informed each time that I was in fact on lunch and unavailable.
All this was happening in the midst of the ruckus of Fire #1 in addition to a phone that was just ringing off the hook. Too noisy to even think. Co-workers asking me when Fire #1 will be done while I’m trying to unravel Fire #2 and vice versa. Annoyances, distractions and pressure all preventing me from doing what I really should have been working on which was…
Fire #3) A new client of ours who has hired us to design some packaging for a product of hers. She needs it on a very tight deadline and we are doing everything in our power to accommodate her. I had sent her a PDF proof before lunch and didn’t expect to hear back on it until later in the day. When I got back from lunch I saw that there was an email from her, but was unable to even read the subject line because I already had Fires #1 and #2 to deal with.
Once they were finally put away, I found the email waiting for me. All it said was that she really appreciated all the work I had done to merge the image of her product into the stock photo backgrounds that she had selected to go on the box. And that she was very impressed with my attention to detail and how I added reflected colors from within the stock photo unto the product to make it seem more naturally “there.” All this under the subject line “You are very good at what you do.”
We are so seldom thanked or commended for our work that when I saw the subject line I almost threw it away as spam. Thank God I didn’t. It made up for all the other crap I had just gone through. Stuck a print out on the side of my filing cabinet.
Funny how one simple little good thing can counteract a bunch of complicated bad ones.
