Kinko's Drama

I have a great marketing opportunity for Lessons In Stalking.  The Southeastern Book Sellers Association is holding its annual Fall  conference in Winston-Salem, not far from where I live.  I have a friend working the event who'll be stuffing the "grab bags" given to conference attendees and she's offered to place a piece of promotional literature for my book in each of the bags.  Yippee!!  I have good friends.

So, the first order of business this week was to get myself some promotional literature.  My printer is printing up bookmarks but those won't be in until the end of the month.  No problem--I'll use Kinko's. 

My idea is to make up postcards with cover of the book on the front and a promotional blurb and website info on the back.  4 postcards to a sheet of paper.  Not rocket science.

So I copy my cover and text to a disk and haul myself the 30 minutes to the nearest Kinko's.  Standing in line, I note the large sign over the front desk advertising "DESIGN SERVICES - Flyers, Business Cards, Pamphlets.  Let us help you meet your needs!"  I get to the desk and explain what I need, holding out my disk.

The Kinko's worker takes the disk reluctantly, like it's laden with cooties.  Sighing and walking over to a machine she asks, "What program is it in?" 

"Adobe and Word," I answer.

She glares at me.  I'm not kidding you.  This woman glared at me and barked, "You mean it's not the same program?" in a voice that made me feel as if I'd just done something very naughty.

After a little back and forth she said she'd have to send the pic and text to a Kinko's in Maryland that does design services (perhaps they should ship their store sign advertising design services there as well).  Then it would be a 48-hour turnaround time until they e-mailed me the proof and then--depending on how busy they were--we could see about getting it printed.

The design services alone are $40.  But I don't have the full version of Acrobat on my computer so I can't modify the image myself.  At their mercy, I am.

All of this is bearable.  What annoys me is the attitude that I as a customer have done something wrong in asking them for this service.  I worked in a copycenter in college so yes, I'm sure this was a pain in the butt order.  But you know what?  Suck it up.  The customer shouldn't see that you're annoyed.  Customer Service 101, folks.

Sigh.  Ignore me.  I'm worried about getting the postcards back in time and am feeling a little mean because of it.  See what Blair has to live with?