“All right,” said John to himself, “I’m on my way to some little town in heaven-knows-where to do my first catalog press check. My co-worker, Tiffany, annoyingly enough, is working on the much more talked about Internet project. Granted, the online thing didn’t really do as well as we’d all hoped. Tons of sales came in, but they couldn’t even come close to the paper catalog’s sales. Still, the Net’s where it’s happening, so that’s where I want to be.”
But here John was, landing in a strange town about to experience his first print run.
Somebody, a really chatty salesman whose name John immediately forgot, picked him up and deposited him at one of the plush rooms reserved for clients. John needn’t bother going out of doors for anything, since these rooms were part of the printing plant complex. He was, he soon realized, a prisoner of less-than-useful luxury.
In the main room next to his bedroom was a huge bar, stocked better than most he had seen. As the evening wore on, however, and no salesman appeared, he started to get a little tired of living on peanuts, pretzels and booze. Questions about when the catalog was to go on press always met with the same response: “Soon.”
Finally, someone phoned the room and said to be prepared; the book probably was going to be running about 2 a.m. John wasn’t happy; he’d had no dinner and no one to complain to. The pressman’s representative kept talking about some big event the salesman was attending that evening (hence, the lack of attention to John), but nobody came to visit John in his velvet prison.
Looking around for entertainment, he found tons of outdated, Western type videos. He tried a couple. They were as good as the press run was going. He gave up and decided to hit the sack and wait for the wakeup call that would take him to his reason to be of the moment.
Morning dawned and no wakeup call. Picking up the receiver, he learned that there were problems and it could be as much as a day before the run actually happened. And wonder of all wonders, his rep showed up with a McDonald’s breakfast.
Granted, greasy food helped a lot, but John had had enough of this. He’d noticed a map on the wall and realized that a town he’d always wanted to visit was only an inch away. A couple of quick calls to his travel agency had him booked on a flight to this tiny town and back in the same day. Since the latest press OK time was now estimated to be 12 hours away, he packed his bags and headed to the airport.
Once aboard the plane, he was surprised to realize that it was taking twice as long to get there as planned. He chalked it up to the usual airline inefficiencies, but upon arrival, he spotted a clock and realized he hadn’t allowed for the time zone difference. Bummer, he thought – but decided that the loss of an hour was no big deal.
The phone was ringing the minute he arrived in his hotel room. “We’re on press now. How fast can you get here?” A frantic call provided him with a chartered plane service. An hour later he was desperately holding onto the armrests as the plane bounced along a ridge of mountains. The bouncing wasn’t scaring him as much as the fact that the pilot had no radar and tended to stutter the plane’s location into the mike – five minutes after they’d passed it. Clouds obscured the mountains, but the plane moved ahead.
Miraculously, they arrived in one piece and John rushed to the printing press.
Upon arriving he was met by 12 of his closest business friends. Mercifully, he’d forgotten they were coming. The buyers, marketing types and creative folks were all assembled at the press giving their distinctive input. The printing rep confided to John that they’d already used double the paper allocated for the press start up. “They can’t seem to agree on anything,” he said.
Thinking quickly, John made up a name of what he purported to be the local hot spot and, taking the rep aside, arranged that his associates would all be driven somewhere that came close to his description. “Thank the powers that be that creative types are easily sucked into the newest new thing,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief that he now had the press OK all to himself. “Need to make up the lost money on that wasted paper,” he thought, “and I’ll be a hero.”
While a grand idea, there were a couple of problems. One was that, due to a unrealistic schedule, John had no separation proofs to review the press proofs against. All he had were transparencies.
It didn’t take long to understand how the pressman felt about this: “Are you joking? How can I see how accurate the color is on a press proof against a transparency? The press proof is opaque ink on paper. The transparency allows you to see light though the color. The two will never match.”
As John tried to match what he was seeing on the printed paper against the transparency, which was luminous compared with printed pages, he quietly agreed.
This was not going to be fun.
“Add more yellow,” John directed. The press proofs came back, but it was obvious no more yellow had been added. “Where’s my yellow?” he practically cried. “I didn’t think it needed it,” said the pressman. Hence, John’s first lesson in press communication. The pressman was young, but he was old enough to know that John didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about, so he just ignored him.
But John thought he did know his business and refused to let the pressman bully him. And so it went. Some 10 hours and lots of paper later, an experienced pressman came on the job and, through calm, sensible negotiation, produced a press proof in 30 minutes that everyone loved. Now all John had to do was see what awaited him in the bindery. But really, how much trouble could you have with seven different versions of a catalog?
Lessons learned:
– Don’t take comrades; one person’s input is enough.
– Don’t leave the press site even if it seems as if you’ll be there forever.
– Always have proofs to read against (unless you’ve moved to filmless printing).
– Know how well-experienced the pressman (or woman) you’ll be working with is.
– Don’t forget to oversee the bindery process as well as the printing process.
– Make sure the printer you choose has a solid inplant customer service rep.
Network
