Printer man

Alright. Today's been frustrating. I've been having too many "white people' problems and figured I haven't ranted on this account in a bit so here.

Firstly, I'm getting ready for FWA. Me and Centra will be there, riding down from Ohio and ohio-like areas with Pendragon in a convoy full of hilarity. So in getting ready for FWA, I wanted to have some bookmarks printed out, and some new prints from stuff i've done recently. Three prints, 20 each, bookmark sheets, which were already formatted to be printed on 11 x17 index card-stock, 5 total. So 65 prints total. I spent time saving them as PNG's, which is how my college had them printed because it was better at keeping quality, and PSDs, of each. The drive to the printers is about 20, 25 mins, and I'm figuring on coming back a few days later to pick everything up. As i figured my entire debacle would take about 5-10 min of ordering, then I can go back home to work on IA's. SO. PREFACE DONE.

I get there, and the guy off the bat seems very... dim... I guess is the best way to put it. Older. In my knowledge, older people don't know shit about computers. Reasoning comes from knowledge of many old people, none of which know what a computer does besides e-mails. Slow talker. Seems easily confused. I hand him my zip drive and he plugs it in. So here's where our list of issues starts.

- He doesn't know how to locate the zip drive. He literally spends like 2-3 min going "hmm...hhhhhmmm' before I go 'it's kingston, under desktop"

I explain i have one PNG file of everything, and one PSD file of the same thing. he prints up the PNG files, and everything's at about....40% the full size. Thus begins the real fun. I told him that maybe the PNG file had compression issues, to use the PSD instead.

- He tells me that CS5 documents do not open in CS4. - bullshit -
- He does not know how to change the orientation of the paper in the printing menu.
-His Photoshop keeps crashing every time he opens up the paper properties.
-Eventually he turns around and tells me what I'm asking is impossible.

I can see this guy's desktop. he's got like....4 other adobe programs open, frantically opening Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop- repeatedly-, because he doesn't see "crash report" at the top of his fucking window. HE DOES THIS LIKE 5 TIMES. it's some hoopy old ass computer.

- He tells me I'm probably going to have to drive home and convert these to PDF files. 2 problems with that
1: He's changed one of the files into PDF himself because that's what Photoshop FUCKING DOES
2: WHY DO I NEED TO DRIVE HOME TO DO THIS

-He literally just keeps doing the same thing; opening in CS4, Open the document, go to print settings, click on "paper properties" and the thing crashes. Like 5-6 fucking times this happens, and he just turns around and goes WELP, DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

On a normal basis, I have a pretty moderate fuse with someone. I'll put up with shit for a long while. When it comes to my business, I'll put up with shit for longer. That's why I put up with the previous shop where I got my prints done, where the people asked if I did witchcraft and could cast spells on their co-workers because I had images of Furries. YOU PEOPLE WONDER WHAT HELL I GO THROUGH FOR YOU, ITS A LOT. But the price was good and the quality was great. So I dealt with it.

So i'm....Taking deep breaths, smiling, trying to look stupid and helpless instead of pissed off and annoyed. But it's starting to show through, for i've been watching him FAIL like FAILOPUS for THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES when one of his co-workers, the SHIPPING guy, comes by to help. And the original guy proceeds to tell him that Photoshop won't open the document at all, when it does, it's just his stupid PAPER PROPERTIES FUCKING IT UP. SO HE LIIIESSS. And he keeps doing it! He tells me that I must've set it up wrong, that I should go home and change it to PDF files. I kept suggesting he just do it in JPEG, as it's saved in full format and 300 DPI so it should be fine. The guy asks if it'll even convert it to PDF here, and the first guy tells him it doesn't!

FIRST OFF YOU WHORE IT'S RIGHT THERE ON YOUR FUCKING DESKTOP. PDF. FUCKING FIGURE IT OUT THIS IS YOUR BUSINESS!

I mean seriously! I've never watched some dumb-fuck blatantly lie to my face like I can't fucking hear him! So i keep chiming in going "OH, WAIT, NO, ISN"T THERE ONE ON THE DESKTOP THERE? " Then when they turn around and the first guy is obviously frustrated because he's never printed anything but a PDF in the past, I smile like I don't know a fucking thing and blink like I'm densely made out of retard. Because if he's got blatant lying on his side, I've got blonde-bimbo honesty and "GET THIS SHIT DONE" passive aggressiveness going for me.

I SEE YOUR LIES, PRINTER MAN, TWO CAN PLAY AT THIS GAME.

So. SO. The issue is....are you ready? He hasn't restarted his computer in a while. yeah. That was the issue. I kinda figured that the ram was eaten up by the fact it took forever and a half to load anything. Or the fact that stuff kept crashing. But i'm silly and observant like that. So he restarts his computer, and keeps doing the old-man version of a hissy fit, whining and bitching constantly that nothing'll work. The shipping guy starts making motions that he's gonna leave, and i think he could tell by my "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T LEAVE YOU KNOW THINGS" look that he stopped, came back around and kept helping. Thank god for that man, seriously. I was gonna start throwing chairs around.

So the first guy keeps bitching that it wont' work, and SHOCKER, when he tries it again, it works. But he prints it up again and it's still 40% the original size. He goes back to suggesting I drive all the way the fuck home, do something that'll take me 5 minutes, if that, and drive back. When I calmly (calm in a very surface way) explain that home's a long fucking ways off, the shipping guy offers to try his hand at it. Cue the hallelujah music.

That guy tries it again, and comes up with the same problems, literally un-clicks like.... 2 boxes and clicks the "Scale to fit to media" button that I suggest, and wallah. It prints the right size. He and I start talking about how other people come to us for their computer issues while the guy behind him keeps shrugging and confused about life and computers and the magical talking box and the saxa-ma-phone. Fuck if I know. If someone came up to me and went "Sorry about that, he has mental disabilities" that would've made this situation a lot easier to understand. So the shipping guy prints out all of my other shit (which I was expecting to come back later for but fuck, I'll take it) prints out my bookmarks way too fucking big that they're like the size of most book covers, and at this point I just don't give a shit. The entire trip was a 2 hr ordeal.

So that's one thing that was annoying, and massively so.

Second thing is that I run a club on DA about dragons. I'm the only person who does the submissions, i've got guides like "Don't submit non-colored stuff on lined paper" and "Don't suggest things to favorites, just join the damn club if you want to submit" and I'm just... a little....fucking annoyed by all the CLEARLY traced Neondragon how-to-draw dragon art I have to go through. Like.... pose for pose, the coloring is the same, the lines are all warbly, which indicates they just laid some copy paper over it and traced. It's something small, I know, but for fucks sake, you're not fooling anyone. Best is when they have the print option enabled, because everyone wants to buy your fucking trace-over warble-art with the crayon ass-shavings.

Another fun one is when someone submits like 3 different versions of the same fucking thing. Look at my lineart head with red eyes! Looka t this one with a Photoshop filter laid over it! HERE THERE BE LENSFLARE. and it's comical how often I get bitched out by people angry I didn't submit all the versions, too. I usually pick the one that looks the most interesting and deny the rest. Generally it becomes and argument about what is and isn't art and I 'm not allowed to judge lensflare mc dragoneyes like that.

WOMEN, AMIRITE?