Krazy Kinkos

If you've read the blog on my MySpace profile, or actually spoken to me lately, you already know about the wedding *fiasco*. Long story short, I came back from a very long, very tiring business trip to find a cute little note in my in-box titled "Clipper City Bad News." Clipper City is the name of the boat I chartered for my wedding...which is coming up fast.

Nobody wants to get bad news from their wedding venue. Most wedding news is bad, anyway. It usually comes in the form of "I don't like the tuxedo you picked," or "I realize you don't even know Aunt Harriet, but it's really important that she come, and she needs to bring an entourage, can you make room for them on the guest list?"

So I open the cryptic *bad news* message, only to find that it was, indeed, bad.

"At the end of last week I was told that the Coast Guard had terminated Clipper City Tall Ship's ability to take out passengers indefinitely, effective June 1st." This from the sales director, who also indicated that he had lost his job along with our deposits.

A quick Google search for news turned up gems like "Clipper City owner abandons fight to stay afloat" and "Tall Ship Biz Going Down."

After a disappointing attempt to relocate our event to another local charter company, I got the bright idea to look into the USS Constellation museum. Built in 1864, Constellation is the tall ship in Baltimore. A bad-ass enforcer of the ban on slave trading, piracy and the apparent crime of being either French or Spanish in the New World, the Constellation carried out missions in far-flung locations like the Mediterranean and the Congo River. Perfect! I'll take it! The fact that it was available on our date/time at an affordable rate sealed the deal.

Now what to do with those pesky invitations. Already printed with the other vessel's name, and desperately needing to go out, the invitations were the most vexing component of "Project Wedding Fix."

Enter Kinko's...

My first instinct was to check with a reputable stationer to learn the proper procedure for correcting invitations. The nice folks at Papyrus informed me that it would take two weeks, and cost close to $100 to print correction cards that would neither match my paper stock nor bear the same fonts used on my invites. They advised me to try Kinkos.

Should be simple, right? Can't be harder than buying donuts, and we've been through that...

Not being a desktop publishing expert, I simply created a graphic in Photoshop announcing the change in location and listing the new address. I grabbed the font and colors from the proof of the original invitations, and figured I was ready for Kinkos. Incorrect.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I walked into the store. A disheveled employee greeted me at the counter with a "What'chu need?"

Me: "Well, I've got this file that I need to print, but I'm not sure what my options are in terms of paper size, weight and color." [I produced my memory stick]

Kinkos dude takes the memory stick, without a word, and hands it to his co-worker who is sitting at a computer some distance behind the counter. The co-worker doesn't even look at me. He grunts at Kinkos dude, who then shuffles back to the counter. Note that my question about paper options has not been answered.

Kinkos dude: "How many do you want to print?"

Me: "Well, it's not laid out for print yet. There's just the one image, and it needs to be about this big." [I pulled out my wedding invitation and showed him approximately how large I wanted the correction card be in relation to the invitation.] "I need to know the paper size options, so that I can figure out how many we can print per page."

Kinkos dude: "Well, if you just have the one image it's going to print one on each page."

Me: [obviously somebody here is missing the point...is it me?] "Umm...well, I don't want to waste a bunch of paper, I would like to figure out how to optimize the process so that the image is duplicated as many times as possible on each sheet."

Kinkos dude: "I can't alter your image, if I do it won't look right."

Me: "Well, how do you do business cards? Do you have a template, or something? Kind of like what you use when you print labels? Then we could just replicate the image across the template."

Eyes flicker with understanding. This is good! Perhaps I've broken through the apathy.

Kinkos dude shuffles back to his co-worker and mutters something to him. Then he pulls a piece of paper off the printer and brings it back to the counter.

Kinkos dude: "Here is what it will look like if we print it four-up."

This is nowhere near what I wanted. The text is blown-up to fill a space the same size as my wedding invitation. What happened to business cards?

Me: "That's too big. Can we make it smaller, and just get as many as possible on the page?"

Kinkos dude: "That's the size of your image. We can't re-size it, because it's a read-only document. I can try to print it like a business card, though."

Ok. Now, I'm getting frustrated, because: a) I know for a fact that my file is not a read-only document and; b) the print-out is approximately 5 x 7, I sized the image in Photoshop at 3 x 1 1/2. Either I really am clueless in the art of print production, or the Kinkos staff is incompetent. Hmm. Probably a little of both, with an emphasis on the latter.

Me: "Look, do you have Photoshop on any of these computers here? I could just create an 8 1/2 x 11 document and duplicate the image a bunch of times until it fills the page."

Kinkos dude: [ignores my question about Photoshop] "Yeah, if you do that we can print it, no problem."

Me: "Well, do you have Photoshop here?"

Kinkos dude goes back and confers with his co-worker.

Enter the *Manager*...

Manager: "What do you need done?"

Me: "I'm trying to print something, but I want to make sure it's sized correctly on the page and that I'm using as much of the paper as possible. What kind of paper do you have, by the way?"

Manager: "Ok. Well, they're going to take care of the printing for you, [produces a sample book, hallelujah!] and here's the paper selection. [eyes my invitations] You're going to want to use card stock with those."

Me: [definitely not convinced that *they* are going to handle anything for me, or anyone else] "Ok, bright white card stock."

Manager: [directed at Kinkos dude and his co-worker, who are huddled around the workstation] "Bright white card stock!"

At this point, I feel that it's totally out of my control, so I simply go over to a table and sit down to await whatever results are headed my way. After about 2 minutes Kinkos dude comes back over with another print-out. This one is much better. The size is correct and there are six on the page now, instead of four. However the ink color doesn't quite match, and anybody can see that the page can handle more than six.

Me: [deciding not to tackle the ink color issue] "Well, the size is much better, but can't we fit more than six per page?"

Kinkos dude: [looking like he wants to strangle me] "I can't put more than six on the page without re-sizing the image, and then it won't look the same."

At this point, I really don't understand why adding more items to the page requires re-sizing, but I'm feeling defeat setting in. Not to mention, he's already re-sized it to bring it back from the 5 x 7 into something the fits on a business card. However, if I keep insisting on a logical explanation for things, nothing will get done, so f*ck it!

Me: "Ok, fine, but I'm going to need you to cut them up, too."

Kinkos dude: [really wants to strangle me at this point] "Awwlright." [in a tone that implies I'm only asking for more trouble and/or disappointment]

He goes back behind the counter and spends the next five minutes manually hacking away at the sheet of paper. It takes about 18 cuts before he has something to show me. Meanwhile, I'm wondering how they deal with bulk orders...can't this process be automated?

Kinkos dude hands me the print-out, now cut into six unevenly-sized pieces.

Me: "Um, these are totally uneven. I mean I guess it doesn't matter, because people won't be comparing their invitations (I hope), but can't you set the cutter to specific dimensions?"

Kinkos dude: "Yeah, it's uneven because I did it by hand. But yeah, nobody's going to notice that they aren't the same size since they'll all be going to different people."

Me: "Ok, whatever." [this keeps getting more and more complicated, and I have no idea why.]

Kinkos dude: "How many do you need?"

Me: "125. At six per page that is...let's see, how many pages?"

Kinkos dude: "Uhh. 38."

Me: "No, it's six into 125. That equals 21 (actually 20.83, but we'll round up since it's sheets of paper and they don't come in fractional sizes)."

Kinkos dude shrugs and wanders back to the printer area. When he comes back he's got several stacks of uniformly-sized business cards bearing my message. I don't bother counting them, I simply pay as quickly as possible so that we can leave.

But before I say goodbye to Kinkos (forever, I hope) I figured I might as well use the restroom. At least that seemed convenient and straightforward. Again, not the case. After washing my hands I turned to the paper towel dispenser, and pumped the lever a few times. Nothing came out. That's when I noticed the sign on the dispenser.

"Hand driers are more efficient and better for the environment. They prevent trees from being used as paper towels."

Oh. So that's why the towel dispenser is empty. Too lazy to remove it, they simply stopped filling it, and pasted a stupid sign about how it's better for the environment to use electricity than a renewable resource, like trees. If Kinkos was really concerned about the environment, they should encourage their staff to figure out how to fit more than six business card-sized graphics onto an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of card stock!