Printers Are Big Fat Liars!

I am the owner of a printing company, so I can tell you (used to hear it a lot)—PRINTERS ARE BIG FAT LIARS...

• about quality,
• about service,
• about delivery dates,
• and to cover up mistakes!

Now that I’ve got the hair standing up on the back of your neck—let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, when I was a very young apprentice, I worked for a printer in the bayou country of Louisiana. Small shop, about 10 employees, and one of the last letterpress shops in our town.

The owner was a good man—one of the hardest working people I had ever met. But, it seemed like we were always late printing and delivering orders. When jobs ran way behind schedule, and customers would call to find out if their job was ready, my boss would give them every excuse in the book. Many times he would come to me in a panic, saying, “Philip, get off that HOT job and get on this HOT HOT job!”

One day, he called me into his office and asked me to get on the phone with an irate customer, wanting me to stall the customer somehow about his job being delayed again. I was just young and dumb enough to go along with it, and concocted some elaborate (actually, lame) excuse to give the customer, while smiling at my boss like a Cheshire cat.

After I hung up the phone, my boss was also grinning and said, “Philip, you’re a better liar than me!”

Now, I’m not saying my boss didn’t care. In fact, I guess he tried harder than anybody to do his best for his family, his employees and his customers. He just didn’t know anything about the power of good business systems, nor was he trained in anything like Total Quality Management (continual improvement in every area of a business). He was just a hard-working man who had worked his way up from Linotype operator to owning his own shop—still putting in 12 hours a day, six days a week, and sometimes Sundays. Sound familiar?