Some Customers

It's time to return to the time honoured tradition of talking about our customers behind their backs...

Customer One: That's Totally My Fault
This customer was stupid enough to totally ignore my advice and then had the cheek to complain to me when it all went wrong for her. This customer was making some print from print reproductions which means she had to scan in each individual image for it to work properly. It was going to take this customer a long time to do so since she had about 30 pictures she wanted to reproduce (each picture takes 3 minutes to scan if you're quick and know what you're doing). After scanning a few I think she realised that she was going to be there for a while, just like I had become painfully aware that it was going to take her well past closing time. I usually turn the screens off when we close but I will obviously let anyone who is using one finish, however I have to turn them off before I leave and if she hadn't finished by then I would effectively have to tell her to go away. Anyway, when she realised how long it was going to take she had an idea.
She asked me if it would be possible to scan more than one picture at a time and then cut them herself. I explained to her that scanning more than one picture would reduce the size of the reproduction and told her that it wouldn't be a good idea, since we don't offer a size that we could fit any number of 4x6 prints onto exactly. It turns out she was planning to scan three at once, print them at 8x10 and then cut them herself. As you might have realised, 3 4x6 prints won't fit on an 8x10, it would need at least a 12x18, which we can't do. I told her this and that doing so would result in her getting one proper print and then a couple of inches of the other two, not to mention the fact that it would cost her more. This was the end of the conversation.
As it was so late - she finished five minutes before I went home - I didn't get to print them. To be fair I didn't notice that she had ordered a load of 8x10 prints because I was in a hurry and I couldn't take payment as the till had already been emptied. Had this not been the case I would have noticed this and would have checked to make sure she hadn't done precisely what I had just finished telling her not to. Predictably I was the person who dealt with her (I'm sorry, but I really hate the expression "I served her") when she came to pick them up and discovered that she had received exactly what I told her she would, an 8x10 print with one full 4x6 and small part of two others on it. Naturally this was my fault, despite having explicitly told her that it wouldn't work that way. She wasn't best pleased when I told her that either, and was even less pleased when both myself and my team leader refused her a refund.


 Customers Two and Three: Demanding

I've had my fair share of customers asking us to bend the rules for them. If it's something small like printing 155 pictures in an hour rather than the 24 hours the system forces upon them then it's no problem. There are some things, however, we just can't do, no matter how much we might like to.
At least the first of these two customers was nice when she asked us if she would could print 70 pictures in ten minutes if she ordered the one hour service. Er... no, sorry, we can't. Even if we had absolutely nothing else to do at the time we couldn't do it, it just takes longer than that I'm afraid. Now, all credit to her, when she was told that we couldn't do it she didn't become a miserable cow like so many do. It amazes me sometimes how little common sense some people have. They don't seem to realise that we have a minimum service times for a reason and that printing pictures takes times. It's a common occurrance for me to take payment and then have people stand there waiting for their pictures (I know some places have instant thermal printers on their kisok, but ours is clearly adverstised as at least one hour). They seem most upset when told they should come back in an hour.
Having no concept of the time it takes to do things brings us neatly to customer three. This customer was an older man and his wife who dropped off five APS films to be printed and burnt to CD. They selected the one hour service and all was well. With our equipment five APS films would take most of the hour to do, so it was no surprise that they were nowhere near being ready when they came back just 20 minutes later. I didn't deal with them at the time but I was close enough to hear them complain that they had done their shopping now and demanding to know how long it would take. When they were told they needed to come back at the time on their receipt they pointed out that we advertise processing "while you shop". We do, right under the big sign saying one hour processing. I think he was trying to say that we advertise processing while you shop and since they had done their shopping the films should be done, never mind the fact that it says one hour everywhere, as well as on his receipt and I damn well told him they would be ready in one hour when I gave him his receipt.


Customer Four: A First For Me

I didn't actually deal with this customer myself so this comes from the story told to me by the person who did. My colleague found this woman trying to feed her negatives into the SD card slot on one of our digital machines. Apparently she wanted to see what the pictures were having had the film developed elsewhere but declining to have any pictures printed or a CD made and thought that our digital machine would provide a way for her to do so.
Now this is a first for me. I've heard of people putting the wrong card in a slot, getting them the wrong way round and/or upside down (this doesn't happen much anymore) but I've never heard of anyone trying to feed negatives into it before. I know where she took the film originally, and it's a well known company (an item of footwear perhaps?) so it surprises me that she wasn't provided with an index print for the film. It's not very often we get a development only request because people generally want to see what they've gone to the trouble of photographing (a popular one is to have the film developed and transferred to CD without pictures - and is a method I recommend if someone has something they're not sure is going to print well since it's a lot cheaper). When we do however, we always print them an index card because it's no trouble and it at least allows them an idea of what is on the film.
In retrospect it's probably a good idea that I didn't find this woman trying to feed ou digital machine her negatives. I'm not sure I would have been able to keep myself from laughing.