'Just print out the order. Don't mess with it. At all': Specialty printer agrees to print customer's botched order after he insist he knows what he's doing

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 10, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

This print shop employee has a peculiar way of talking to their clients that not everyone is on board with. 

Printers are no strangers to making mockups of designs before they're printed. It can take a few tries to get everything just right: the design needs to be centered, it needs to be correctly sized, and the text needs to be legible from far away. You've probably experienced this for yourself if you've ever had to print something out and make it smaller or larger a few times before you get the outcome you're looking for. 

However, this person doesn't seem to have the customer's best interests in mind, and commenters on this r/MaliciousCompliance post called them out about it. Instead of letting the customer double-check their work, this person, u/WritesForDough42, decided to just print the final copy for them. This cost the company money, wasted time, and probably left a bad taste in the customer's mouth. Just because you're not an expert on something, doesn't mean you want to hear an actual expert gloat about something. That customer is hiring you to tell them what to do, after all, so do that! 

Next, this kids' softball referee got even with an irate parent who wouldn't calm down, telling him, "Remove your team from the field. I am going to have a hot dog." 

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  • 01
    6107 exFURY WERD 41
    via Geri Sakti on Unsplash
  • 02
    Don't Tell Me Your Designer Knows What She's Doing. She Clearly Doesn't
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 03
    If you read my story about my boss who accidentally fired herself ("No One Can Fire My Boss So She Does It Herself"), this happened a couple of years later in 2008. At the time, I was working for a direct mail company that also had a 17 foot Canon color laser printer, so we could do specialty print jobs. I had been in marketing for 15 years at this point, and while I wasn't a graphic designer, I knew enough to have intelligent conversations with real designers.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 04
    A quick graphic design lesson. When designing for printed products, you can't put anything behind your photos or graphic elements. That is, if you stick a blue background behind a photo, your printer thinks it's supposed to print the photo and the background. The photo will look like it's at the bottom of a swimming pool.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 05
    To avoid this, you have to cut out a box the size of the photo-called a knockout and put the photo - inside the box. That way, you don't print the blue background under the photo. Got it? Anyone who understands how to design for print knows that one simple trick.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 06
    I had a marketing agency as a new client, and my contact was the son of the owner and he thought he was hot . It took everything I had not to roll my eyes whenever I met with him. We'll call him Johnny Bigshot.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 07
    Johnny Bigshot wanted 500 brochures for a big real estate agency client. It was only $250, so not a very big job. "No problem," I said. "Does your graphic designer know how to design for print?"
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 08
    "Oh, sure. She just graduated from college and has her degree in graphic design." "Sure, but most people don't print things anymore so most designers don't learn it. So are you sure she knows how to design for print?" Johnny Bigshot assured me that yes, his designer was also hot and knew her stuff.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 09
    "So, when you get her file, just print out the order. Don't mess with it. At all," he said. I rolled my eyes in the car so hard I saw the back of my skull. The file the designer sent over had large black polka dots as a background on the entire page, with a large red box in the middle. My production manager showed me the sample and you guessed it the black polka dots showed through the red box.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 10
    "Should I fix this?" asked the production manager. "Oh, no," I said, smiling. "Johnny Bigshot was very specific about not messing with it." I told her about Johnny Bigshot's designer and she cackled with evil delight. She printed the job and our delivery driver delivered it that same day. A few hours later, I got an angry phone call from Johnny Bigshot demanding my presence at the agency.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 11
    I showed up, and there's Johnny Bigshot, white-knuckle clutching one of the offending brochures. "What the is this?" he demanded, winding up to make this whole thing my fault. "I know," I said. "It looks like doesn't it?"
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 12
    "You're right it does. Why does it look like this?" I paused, took a breath, and said, "Do you remember when I kept asking whether your designer knew how to design for print?" "Yeah." "And you told me that she absolutely without question understood all that?"
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 13
    "Yeah...?" He wasn't sure where this was going, but he wasn't liking it. "Well, she doesn't," I said. "Because people who know how to design for print know that you never put a background behind other graphic elements. They know you need a knockout behind the photo." "Yeah, but..."
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 14
    "And we didn't fix the problem on our end because you told us to absolutely not touch it at all." "Yeah, but..." "If you'd like, we can rerun the job for you. And even though it was your error-" he gave a pained gurgle "we'll rerun the job for half the cost."
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 15
    "Half?!" exclaimed Johnny Bigshot. "My boss wanted to charge the full amount, but I talked him into half for you." (He didn't; I hadn't.) "Just have your designer fix the problem, and resend it, and we'll get it done for you tomorrow." (We could have fixed the error, but I wanted the hotshot designer to learn how to fix her own error so she didn't make it again.)
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 16
    She fixed it, we ran the job early the next morning, and I hand- delivered it to the client myself by lunchtime. Our client was happy, their client was happy, and they always gave us print-ready work from then on.
    via u/WritesForDough42
  • 17
    IseeWhereILook This is a prepress mistake on OP's side. It is a setting in imageware (imagepress, imagerunner? can't remember 100% the name but it's the Canon prepress software) for very specific use cases.
    via u/IseeWhereILook
  • 18
    Nat1CommonSense ⚫ I can only imagine how many mistakes print shops fix. Matt Parker had a tour about his book, which is about maths errors, and he designed his posters/flyers to look like they'd had mistakes, but the print shop ended up fixing them anyways. Which I find absolutely hilarious because I've got to imagine them getting the "error" files and just sighing about it because people send stuff in like that all the time lol
    via u/Nat1CommonSense
  • 19
    BenjPhoto1 I've found that a lot of printers I was forced to work with don't understand the difference between dimensions and DPI. "We need you to send the file set to 300 DPI" OK. What size will you be printing it? "That doesn't matter. Just make it 300 DPI" So, I usually send a 1"x 1" at 300 DPI
    via u/BenjPhoto1
  • 20
    smcmbrn I've been artworking and printing in the large and small format print industry for about 16 years (half of my life... yikes!) and I've never come across this happening. I know how to make it happen and I use it when printing using white ink under the cmyk inks. I think the story is true but shouldn't have happened. I think it could have been a RIP software issue.
    via u/smcmbrn
  • 21
    xxxsur Designer here. The story might be true, but the knockout thing is wrong. OP sounds like another person that I come across at work that "I- know-more-than-you- do"
    via u/xxxsur
  • 22
    riascmia Whenever I had something to print out, vinyl banners, labels, etc., the company wouldn't print until I approve the proof that they sent me. Did you guys not send proofs?
    via u/riascmia
  • 23
    deadcrowisland • During this period of time I was a graphic artist at Technicolor. I created and fixed the art that was printed on DVD's, CD's, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray discs. The art came from studios from around the world. I hated Anime art that came with literally 100s and 100s of layers. Never heard of this problem. I agree that this sounds like a printer specific problem, or maybe the RIP was setup wrong.
    via u/deadcrowisland
  • 24
    dumn_and_dunmer I mean. The poor thing might not have known about any of this. She might be really humble, I hope she didn't get yelled at, if so.
    via u/dumn_and_dunmer
  • 25
    lepus_fatalis sounds a bit unprofessional at both ends. Dont you get your client a sample print they sign off on? Really bad practice, even if for a smaller batch.
    via u/lepus_fatalis

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