The end of my workday was interesting to say the least. It went from bad, to what I thought would be worse, to...everything is okay. lol Seriously, I thought at one point one of my coworker was gonna hear some nasty words from my boss. Basically, we're installing some pretty large graphics on a van tomorrow morning. We needed to laminate the graphics and lately it hasn't been going so well. So we went forward with that this afternoon and sure enough, it wrinkled up! We were all discouraged cause when you print the graphic, you have to give it a day to dry, then you can laminate it. Well, a call came from our client all ready to come down tomorrow and anxious before we could see how the laminate was going to go, so I just told him to stick to the plan and come down. My coworker told my boss what happened, then I talked to him and convinved him to set up the cut vinyl for the van since we had the colors. It wouldn't exactly match the digital graphics but it was getter than nothing! He agreed and I went forward in setting up the design for cutting.
Soon after, my coworker actually called the client himself and told him what was going on, without my boss's consent. This is where it got scary! lol Cause now the client is going to here from both of them and at that point I thought 'he's going to hear from my boss for going behind his back on this.' Suddenly he asks me to talk to the client about what we're planning to do, cause I guess he wasn't understanding my coworker (he has a bit of an accent and tends to stutter a bit when he talks, so when he tries to explain something, 10 words turn into 50, if you get what I'm saying). So I explained it to him and he finally understood. What's funny is, he wanted the cut vinyl in the first place rather than the digital print with all the white space around it. Personally, I agree with him. But...it was my boss's call on that one. But honestly, having white blocks of graphics on your car...can look very tacky! Having clean cut letters on your car is much cleaner, so I've been doing a bit of thinking as to how to resolve this issue, and I have some ideas. I do hope that my boss becomes more open to cut vinyl. It's the franchise that's pushing the digital graphics so much, so that's why he insists on using it, but let's use it on applications where the end result it at least aesthetically nice to look at! Honestly, it just doesn't look good, and I think we need to have a meeting about this soon.
So anyhow, after I hang up with the client, I proceed to finish setting up the graphics. Meanwhile, my coworker is printing another set of the graphics, thinking the cut vinyl isn't a great idea, but I'm working according to boss's orders, not his. lol Well, when I'm about finished, I decided not to print anything until the morning, and thank God cause minutes later my boss called his cell phone and told us to hold off on cutting the vinyl: we're going to apply the graphics WITHOUT laminate. Okaaay. Well, at least this is just a temporary solution until we find out what's wrong with our laminator. Apparently my boss convinced him to stay with the graphics. But see, what's gets me is, why would you convince your customer to stay with an application he doesn't like?! That's just wrong! That same customer told me he actually wanted to cut vinyl in the first place, and that people were making remarks about how bad the graphics looked with all that white space around it. So...I'm wondering what was said, and I'm sure I'll hear it tomorrow. But I do admit one thing: I was actually relieved when he told us that, cause at that moment the pressure was off. We would have had one busy morning weeding and taping all that vinyl, that's for sure. Nevertheless, I was all ready to tackle this! lol I was.
well, one nice reward from all this drama was getting a few hours of OT, which I could definitely use. Overall, today wasn't too busy. At the same time, I was a little grieved cause I feel like the work isn't being done as effiently as it could be. For instance, a few small banners were only half finished when she came in to pick them up. I couldn't help but shake my head knowing it didn't get done, cause we had plenty of time to do it. (When I say 'we' I mean my coworkers. lol This might sound selfish, but we have a system going and that was their responsibility) I think we're going to have to have a end-of-the-week summary of how the sytem has been working. It's been a little sluggish from what I can tell so far. I hate to point any fingers and I even want to say 'we' need to pick up the pace, and sure I can always use a little improvement on my part. But the fact is, that's not the issue, and I or we need to address these issues of inefficiency soon or none of us will be working cause there won't be a business to work at. I know that sounds drastic, and yeah...it's probably not that bad. But this isn't the kind of business where you can sit and talk while you're on the computer. It's run by being productive, and it's hard to be productive when to much talking is going on, especially when it's being directed at you! So...all I can say is, it'll be interesting to see how things play out in the next few months, and to see if this can be a reality. I hope so. I really do.
We're all learning from each other, and that is a huge plus! So I'm confident that this CAN work well if we're willing to work together as a team.
Well...hope all goes well tomorrow. I'm interested in knowing what was said behind the scenes! hehe I'll soon find out.
Nite =)
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