Everyone's entitled to a good rant once in a while, right?
I'll just assume that's true and plough right ahead:
I am irked. And I can't seemed to un-irk myself. Perhaps this will help ...
The Background
Where I work, we publish a newspaper every week, but we also do a large amount of "job work" — mainly commercial printing like business cards, letterheads and forms. I design it in our office and when the job is done, I ship the PDF to our sister office, which does all the printing and finishing.
Usually, it works pretty well.
The Incident
However, the person who does the printing (we'll call him Ed) is kind of a jerk. I'd use another word, but I'm trying to keep this blog pretty G-rated. At his best, he's efficient and attentive to detail. At his worst (and this is where I usually find him), he's patronizing and fussy.
There are two sides to every story — I know this — and I try to be understanding. He does have a lot of work to do, between all the newspapers they print in addition to job work. And there's a lot about printing and running a press that I don't fully understand because it's not my job. But that's just it — I don't know how to do his job, so I don't tell him how to do it.
Unfortunately, he doesn't extend me the same courtesy. There are several extra steps I have to take every week, either with job work or with the newspaper, that are unnecessary and bothersome to me, but make his job easier. If anything goes wrong, whether it's a font issue or a fuzzy graphic, you can be sure he'll tell me all about it. He is an "expert" on every single program we use — regardless of the fact I use them on a daily basis and he opens them, at best, once a month.
So, this week, we had a rodeo program to put together. It had to be done by Friday, but since I got the information on Tuesday afternoon, he didn't get the PDF until early Wednesday afternoon.
You would have thought I'd run over his dog, spilled his beer and thumbed my nose at him for all the indignation oozing from his pores.
I tried to be sympathetic, but I couldn't. I'd been pressed, too, and I'd gotten it to him as quickly as I could. Yet it was my fault.
It always is.
Now my name is mud at the other office — how I made Ed miss out on a morning off because he had to come in to print the programs. Thing is, they don't know the rest of the story. All they know is what he tells them, and I'm sure it's a bit skewed in his favor.
•••
I'm trying to make like a duck and let this all roll off my back. It's not easy, though, because it's not the first time this has happened. We're supposed to receive top-notch priority with all of our printing, but often we're shoved to the bottom of the pile. If another newspaper is late with their deadlines, their publication is printed before ours, even if ours is on time. Why? You tell me.
I often think we should take our printing somewhere else, even though we're owned by the same company. Why stick with a company that consistently treats you as second-class and is insulting to your employees?
And I don't buy his excuse of "Well, I was busy" because you know what? We're all busy - all the time. Me - I'm a reporter, photographer, paginator, photo tech, ad salesperson, circulation assistant, receptionist, proof-reader and graphic designer. Yet somehow, I manage to find time to do it all.
•••
I wish I had the chutzpah to tell him exactly what I'm thinking. But years of being polite and giving people the benefit of the doubt is hard to shake. So I keep taking his condescensions and biting my tongue. I don't how long I can put up with it. I just hope when I reach my limit, I can be respectful and professional about it.
