So, in Sunday’s Blade, I found not one but two potentially satisfying classified ads for Web Designers. Which sent me off to Kinko’s before work Monday to print off my specially-made resumé stationery. You know, the stuff that perfectly matches my portfolio website. When I proofed my document at Kinko’s, though, I realized that I’d goofed while resizing the final paper size to legal (instead of "a half-inch too narrow and an inch too long," according to Uncle Frank). The girl gave me the goof as a sample and I went off to work. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave work until 8:30pm (helluva half-day that was, at six hours), so I didn’t have time to get back home and fix the PageMaker document and get back to Kinko’s to get it printed.
Rant: Since when does Kinko’s close?! The BG Kinko’s has two signs on their front door: one that says, "24 Hours A Day, 7 Days A Week," and one that gives their real hours of 7am-9pm most days of the week. I thought Kinko’s was supposed to be "your 24-hour branch office." WTF? — OK, continuing on…
So, today, after Aaron headed off to work, I fixed my stationery (for real this time) and walked my newly-burned CD-R down to Kinko’s. Just as I had done last time, I put my CD on the counter and told the girl (a different one this time) that I had a PageMaker file on the disc of which I needed ten copies, color, tabloid size. She registered all that, and asked me, "Is this, um… is that a PC disc?" Hmm. I informed her that, yes, it was PC. She nodded, took the disc, and headed over to the far side of the employee work area, to the printing computers.
I milled about while she got over there and put the disc in. Finally she called out the name of my file, to make sure that was the one. Yep, it’s the only PageMaker file on the CD… but I just replied, "Yep, that’s it!" And, of course, I know PageMaker well enough to see over her shoulder at 20 feet that she hadn’t installed the fonts before opening the document — the font substitution dialog had come up. She looked confused for a moment, then just clicked through and brought up the document. Then she asked me if I wanted to come look and make sure it was OK before she printed it. I don’t think this is standard company policy… but I walked on back to her computer to look. Sure enough, it had substituted something that was not quite my fonts, and she told me so. I informed her that the fonts were on the disc, at which point she got the "boy, am I new here" look on her face and asked me if I knew how to put the fonts on the computer.
Way to make me feel smart, girlie! I needed an ego boost.
I tried to act informed (which, actually, I was) and I said something like, "Well, I don’t know exactly how you guys do it here… do you have any font management software on that thing?" Thank you, Graphic Design and Typography… thank you, VCT 308… I sound smart now. And she waded through the Start Menu until she finally found Adobe Type Manager and fumbled her way through installing my fonts. She probably had a bear of a time dealing with it later, because I know what a bitch ATM can be about ejected disks sometimes, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.. Anyway, she finally got it going on, and I retreated once more to the customer side of the desk.
From here, the story’s pretty standard. Looked at the first printed proof, approved it, got my remaining nine copies, and paid about two bucks apiece for ’em. Yup, over $20 for ten color printouts on 11×17 paper. But I think it’ll be worth it. Yeah.
Incidentally, while I was researching hyperlinks for this entry, I came across a job posting on the Thread (formerly Image Source) website, and applied for it. So, that makes three possibilities outside of Sky and one within! Hey, Amy, my tarot was right: things are moving in the right direction! Glad I jumped on it…