Just another day...

Texting - me to boss: How much must a customer DESERVE it before I am allowed to pluck her left eye from her inconsiderate skull? ... Hypothetically speaking.

boss to me: You can't do that, my friend. Sorry you had a bad one.

me to boss: Can I convince you to do it for me?

boss to me: lol, I don't know, man. I kinda need this job.

me to boss: I'll talk you into it in the morning.

Typically a 1/2 hour before we close, I start turning off all the equipment and cleaning up, counting down the cash register till and such. Once the doors close I take my paperwork up front and get it signed off on and my shift is over 5 minutes after the store closes.

I am not obligated to keep the machine running until 1/2 prior to close; being a 1 hour lab, 59 minutes until close and I could start shutting down and cleaning, but I generally like my customers and want to give them as much up-time as I reasonably can.

In an effort to bend over backwards in exceptional cases, I can sometimes hold out until just 15 minutes before close to shut down the equipment...  but that's about all I can really muster without going into unapproved overtime.  And now-a-days unapproved overtime is the only type of overtime there is, and it is frowned upon.

Tonight at T-minus 31 minutes until closing time, my phone is ringing.

I answer with my usual business greeting and on the other end of the line is a frantic mother who needs pictures tonight for her son's Eagle Court of Honor in the morning.

"A failure to plan on YOUR part does not constitute an emergency on MY part." I thought, but did not say.

She asks if she can get an order to me in the next 5 minutes, if I could still have it ready for pickup tonight.  I explain that it depends on how many images are in the order and what sizes she is ordering; without knowing that I can't tell how long it will take to print.  She lets me know she needs about 30 5x7 lustre prints.  I tell her that IF she gets the order to me in the next 5 minutes I can still get that done tonight.

At 20 minutes until close she calls back and lets me know she just hit the send button, and asks if I have her order to print yet.  I do not, but manually tell my computer to pull new orders down from the server and it starts downloading...  all 174 images for her 4x6s, 5x5, 5x7s, and 8x10s...  I try to tell her I'm not certain this will all download and print before the store closes, and she says she'll be here in 10 minutes and can wait for them if they won't kick her out once she's inside, then hangs up...  Well, Fuck.

A part of me want to say 'Fuck-it' and shut everything down.  "Tried to tell you it wouldn't be done tonight, sorry." But I have a reputation as a photo-miracle-worker, and my lab has a reputation of being one of the best in the metro, and my company is known WORLD WIDE for treating it's customers exceptionally well... so I commit myself to making it happen...

I'm irritated but not at eye-plucking levels yet...

She gets there a few scant minutes before the doors go down, and wonders around our closed store while I finish up her order.  I'm packing them up at closed+10 when she comes back by to pick them up and pay.  As I'm ringing her up she says "You know, I really did order more than I'm going to be able to use, I can return the ones I don't need, right?" ... ... ...

Are you shitting me? ... not quite there yet...

"Ma'am, we offer a satisfaction guarantee on all of the products we produce; if for any reason you are dissatisfied with the quality of the work we did, we would offer you a refund for the product, but normally on a custom order of photographic prints we would expect you to want what you have ordered."

"So if I return them, tell them that they are too fuzzy?"

NOW... now is when I'm thinking, It wouldn't be homicide if I just ripped out one eye... she would live, she would even adapt to having a fairly normal life.  She could be a pirate for Halloween. She's EARNED it!

"Thank you very much for doing this for me tonight, most people wouldn't have."  You're damn strait most people wouldn't have and YOU'RE the REASON people don't want to help people.  I bend over backwards for you and whilst I'm contorted so, you try to find a way to slip a knife into my back!  Your son may be an Eagle Scout, but you, madam, are an awful human being.

One of the managers I hold in high regard once said something that stuck with me...  and it kept ringing in my head tonight: At our company "we bend over backwards for our customers, but don't bend over forwards for them!"  I feel like she's trying to give it to me up the ass in this one.

Photo Throwdown!

I need to put my ass-kicking boots on!

My photolab no longer has the equipment to develop film into negatives.  I can print from negatives and I can digitize them and save them to a disc (16Base Resolution 2048 x 3072). If you come to me with a roll of film, I send you to one of two local, independently owned photo labs that do good work. It costs more than we used to, but it's how they have been able to afford to keep offering that service when it was no longer cost effective for us.

Today, a customer returns from having visited one of these two labs and lets me know that the worker there was bad-mouthing the work we do.  Not only that, but spreading falsehoods about it. My customer had her film processed there but was going to have it digitized with us because we charge a pittance of what the independent lab does for the same resolution scan. Their staff member asked her if she was going to bring us her film and she affirmed that she was. Then the employee told her when we scan negatives we destroy them afterwards instead of returning the film. (Not True) My customer said if she had the scans she couldn't care if she got her negatives back, she was using us anyway. Then the employee misinformed my customer that we send them off to China to be scanned. (Ridiculous) I think she has my company confused with a different, less wholesome, retail giant. After all the work I've sent them, and with all the effort we put into producing a quality product, I expect more respect from the workers there.

AAMOF this post is now a few days late because instead of polishing it up and posting it, I sent an E-mail to the owner of the little independent photo lab...  He responded that their employee meant no malice, and was working under misinformation.  Furthermore he personally loves shopping at our place and finds folk there friendly and helpful.

A long night.

My two year old refuses to sleep. We let him stay up a half hour past bedtime. We put him to bed and tuck him in. Ten minutes later he's laying at the edge of the hallway staring at us in the living room. Send him back to bed... and again... and again.  An hour and a half after our initial attempt at bedtime he lets me know he's pooped his diaper and needs a new one. An hour after that I find he's snuck into another room to play on the tablet Beeba and Papa got him for Christmas.  (The fact that my two year old got a tablet before I did could be the topic of a separate blog post sometime.) Back to bed and lock the tablet away. 11:30 at night he's up again, telling me his room is scary.

Behold the dreaded FireMonkey

!

"Your bedroom is scary?"
"Uh-huh"
"Why is your bedroom scary?"
"Fire-Monkey is scary, dada."
It took me a moment to remember that "Fire-Monkey" is his name for the humidifier in his room. Okay, perhaps a monkey with steam billowing from the top of his skull watching over you as you slumber might be unsettling, maybe. I go and show him how to turn the humidifier on and off, ask him if he wants it off tonight, and we leave him vaporless, pile blankies on the boy... again, wish him good night... again, and go back to hacking away at the interwebs for about another hour. I'm wrapping up and have heard not a yip from my son since we extinguished his monkey, I briefly considered that mayhap our issues had been resolved and he had drifted off to slumberland following my last intervention. Alas, as I headed to the restroom for my bedtime preparations, I realized things were amiss. The boy's bedroom door was ajar. I peeked in to find him absent from his "big-boy-bed." He wasn't playing in the bathroom, hadn't padfooted past me into the livingroom or guest room. There has been times where he as attempted to sneak into my wife's and my bedroom to sleep on the floor next to our bed, so I check there next... and the little cuss didn't settle for the floor...

No. He hauled his little ass up into our bed and nestled down into my spot! If I wake him, we might just go all night without any sleep! Well, at least he's unlikely to crap the bed since he just let loose a couple hours ago. I go pass out in the arm-chair in the corner. Toddlers are Assholes, but adorable assholes.

As cute as my kids are, and as biased as I am, the Cutest Toddler of the Day award would have to have been given to the 3 year old who's conversation with his father I overheard in a public restroom today.
"Gee Willikers!"
"Really? 'Gee Willikers'?"
"It means 'Wahoo!'"
"Wahoo?"
"Uh-huh, 'Gee Willikers' means 'Wahoo' in Spanish."
Aaaand I try to stifle a chuckle.

That was while I was on a 15 minute break at work... you want to know what no one needs to hear the moment they return to their department after a brief break like mine? "Oh thank Jesus you're back!" Yeah, I was nearly ready to about-face as soon as that left the mouth of my co-worker. Turns out he was just less than half competent and I could clean up his mess in about 60 seconds. It's not his fault he was incompetent, he hasn't been trained to work in my department, but they botched the break schedule and they needed a warm body to stand in for me, and Jordan got the short straw.

Toddlers are Assholes

It's become a mantra in our household... we try not to let the toddler hear us say that.

Crying w/o cause @ 2013 Ren-Fest

Today, my older boy shoulder rammed his mother and infant brother while she was trying to pick the little one up off the floor; told his mommy that she can not turn off the television because it is his, from his time-out spot; swiped and hid a glass ornament from mommy's nightstand, while he was supposed to be napping in his room; TPed his room, while he was supposed to be napping; and hammer-fisted the baby's face without preamble or cause.

I could tell you all about how awful my day at work was, what with this season being eight to ten fold busier than any other time of year, and myself the only veteran employee while we understaffed the department by 60 man-hours/week according to company payroll planing metrics, but it seems insignificant when compared against the struggle of surviving a malevolent, attention seeking two-and-a-half year old boy.

It is my belief that my darling angel of a child is not engaging in this rage-inducing behavior without impetus, but is rather is acting out in ways that garners our immediate attention because he is not entirely adjusted to sharing our time and energy with his baby brother.  Though I empathize with his new plight, I can neither excuse away nor condone improper behavior, especially when it is violence towards his defenseless sibling. I need to be sure he gets a fair amount of attention, with the understanding that "fair" is not defined the same as "equal;" that he learns acceptable ways to communicate when he need more attention; and how to cope with times when he will have to wait for our attention.

When you are a two-year-old you are the only important person.  You have only a vague, fuzzy concept of empathy if any at all. Hedonism is the primary mindset; if it feels good to me, it is right for me. If I want it, there is no reason I should not be able to have it, regardless of what "it" is.  Enlightenment and oneness are a long way off for a two-year-old. Until my boys learn to either respect others, or to act like they do because it makes their parents happy, my wife and I will continue our mantra: Toddlers are assholes!