Not long ago I was exiting the freeway when I got caught up in a whirlwind of freshly printed brochures. There was a young man beside a large delivery van desperately trying to contain the mess. A skid had fallen out of the truck and paper was flying everywhere. I learned later that the printer had to pay a fine for littering, or failure to contain their load, or something. Whatever it was, it only added insult to injury.

Coming on this scene any print professional could tell you immediately what this was–it was a jinxed job.

Murphy holds its hand

Did you ever experience a situation that no matter what you did, you couldn’t make it come out right? From time-to-time printers experience the same thing and they universally call it the jinxed job. In the last post I told you that Murphy was a printer, you know, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. When a jinxed job appears Murphy walks beside it holding its hand. When it is going wrong, it is wrong every step of the way.

You start to get a sense that a jinx is coming when the bid is incorrect. Some important piece of information is missing, forgotten, or not conveyed. The customer expects the given price, but the sales rep has to eat crow, return to the customer, and beg forgiveness before giving them the new price. The most common error is paper. No, I’m not talking paper choice here, I’m saying that the estimator forgets to add in the paper. Since paper, as I’ve discussed in a previous blog, accounts for 30-60% of the job, forgetting paper could double the estimate. When that happens, the printers try to work with the customer and maybe give them the paper at cost. That should do it, right? The problem is solved so we move on. Don’t be silly it’s never that easy.

Remember this is a jinxed job and Murphy is in charge. Invariably the job gets written up wrong. The job jacket is processed normally and nobody catches the error.  Of course we don’t realize this until the job is complete and were doing a postmortem to determine what went wrong. The exercise in locating the source to avoid having the same problem  reoccur, is pointless. The blame is systemic. When Murphy is exercising full control, the mistakes happen all down the line, like Dominoes in a row.

Simple can be the worst

I recall a simple calendar we once printed for an insurance firm. The size was 18″X24″. It was a poster style rather than a multi-page calendar, so it covered the entire year. The art was simple, and the printing a breeze, since it was just one color. This job was a light walk on a summer day, a no-brainer. They had an upcoming event where they intended to distribute the posters to customers and prospective customers. No problem, the event was two weeks away. That was more than enough time to print the job. Ha! Jinxed job.

The first error belonged to the customer. There was a typo on their address. We fixed the typo and offered to reprint the job at cost, but, and this is where it really went wrong, the customer’s office was in a town some thirty-five miles away. They couldn’t make the trip to see another proof, so they told us to proceed without a proof.  We didn’t know this at the time, but Murphy was there and smiling that snide toothy grin of his. Don’t you just want to just smack him? We fixed the typo alright, but in doing so, introduced another error. The reprinted job was delivered with just two days leeway, but there was still enough time to fix our error, reprint, and make their deadline,  just barely.

This time we made sure that customer saw a proof. We were confident nothing else could go wrong. When nothing else can go wrong is when Murphy is at his best, don’t you know?  The customer came to the shop the morning of the event to pickup her job. She came in, we showed her what the printed piece looked like and we sent her happily out with a delivery person to help load it into her car. It had been raining that morning (you know where this is going, don’t you?). There were dirty puddles in the parking area. Murphy, Murphy, Murphy. Our delivery guy slipped and dropped the two carefully kraft-wrapped bundles right into the biggest puddle. We brought it back in, and tried to salvage a few “good” ones for the event, but the edges were mostly dirty. There wasn’t much to  save.

We get no respect

Finally on the 4th printing, we got it right. We missed their deadline, but we got it right. Do you think we were appreciated for all of our effort? No, we never saw that customer again. They were too nice to tell us what they really thought of us, but the message got through. They expressed loud and clear it with their feet.

I’m not just talking through my hat here. I belong to several professional groups inside of Linked In. I’m finding that Linked In is a great web tool for getting acquainted with fellow business people in my fields of interest. Recently I posed a question about this blog site. I asked relative strangers to check it out and give me their thoughts and advice.  I believe that since their comments were published on the Internet it would be okay to copy them here as well. If I’m wrong about that would someone please let me know? Or if any of the commentators want me to remove their words I won’t hesitate to do it. The comments are complete including any websites they may have included. I’m hoping I can repay the favor they’ve done me by pointing others to their sites.

Anyway here are some of the comments I’ve received to date:

Sharyn Dawson wrote:

Bill,

I like the blog. You make some very good points. I find myself in the same whirlwind situations as you described almost every day. Luckily, I really enjoy what I do!

Joseph Langen wrote:

Hi Bill,
Welcome to blog world. I took a look at some of your blogs. For one you have a catchy theme which helps. Some blogs are just fancy ads for products. Yours gives readers something of value to think about. I think this is a real plus. You are giving rather than just taking. Writing a blog becomes easier with time. I hae been doing one, Conversations with Calliope (www.commonsense-wisdom.blogspot.com) for several years and look forward to it each morning. It’s second nature now and serves to prime my writing pump for the day. Best of luck with your blog. Feel free to contact me if I can be of any help.
Joe

Lauren Hayes wrote:

Hey Bill,
Great blog. I also have a blog about the label printing company I work for http://intouch-labels.com/blog. We have been blogging for a while now and think it is a great way to connect to people. It can be a lot of work in terms of finding topics, keeping it up to date, etc., but it can also drive a lot of traffic and provides people with useful information. Keep it up!

Bill Corcoran wrote:

hey bill
I’m thinking of starting one also so I’ve checked out yours. pretty cool blog,
seems like a lot of work though.
bill

Benjamin Lukoff wrote:

I like your design. How’d you select your WordPress theme?

My wife is the techie in this household–she did it.

Joan Curtis wrote:

Hi Bill,

You are smart to start blogging. I recommend two books for you:

Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal
Blogwild by Andy Wibbels.

Also, take a look at my blog (http://www.TotalCommunicationsCoach.com/blog) Here’s another I like very much http://barbaragiamanco.com/wordpress

Here are my suggestions on your blog:
1. It looks like you are blogging everyday and that’s great.
2. Change your artwork. It doesn’t seem upbeat enough. Barb’s blog above will give you and idea of what a blog ought to look like.
3. Make sure you categorize your posts. Yours are all “uncategorized.” Categorizing them will enable your readers to quickly go to blogs of certain topics.
4. Make sure you put lots of tags on the blogs so they’ll be picked up elsewhere.
5. Use photos to illustrate your message.
6. Begin your blog post with a question. Take a look at the blog I posted today.
7. Link your blog posts to Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media.

Keep up the good work!

Michelle Hutchinson (Greenberg)

I checked out your blog and I love your folksy writing style; it makes me feel like we’re old friends even though I’ve never met you. I did notice several typos and grammar and punctuation errors (sorry, I’m an editor and I just can’t help myself), so make sure you proofread (or have someone else proofread) your entries before you post them. For example, in the entry dated January 21, 2009, the title currently reads: Too Busy to Write, too Busy to Plan. The second ‘too’ in the title should be capitalized, so it is ‘Too.’ You also have a sentence that reads, “January is already wraping up…” Note that ‘wraping’ should be ‘wrapping’ (double p).

I also see that you are writing a book entitled, “The Office Workers Guide To Getting Stuff Printed.” Note that ‘Workers’ should be ‘Worker’s’ (with an apostrophe s).

Do you have an editor for your book? If not, I can work up a firm editing quote for you after I do a free sample edit of up to 2,500 words from the book. That also gives you a free opportunity to see what good editing can do for your manuscript.

Please feel free to check out my Web site at www.wordhelper.com and/or contact me at info@wordhelper.com.