House Sitting

It is our third night of house sitting and we are loving it. I really like having my own place again. It is so much better. The house is a lot quieter and I like the quiet. Superman's fortress of solitude would just about be perfect.

Work is going well. We are shooting mainly passport photos and working on the studio itself to arrange things more nicely and get ready for the cap and gown graduation season which is starting in two weeks.

The other day an elderly lady came in to find out about a photo she her daughter had ordered back in Octobers. She said it was taken in June. I couldn't find the name in the jun folder, so I looked in May and July and the her folder wasn't in those ones either. I asked her could in be under a different name? "No, I'm the one who paid for it" The lady was a granny type so I asked "Could it have been under the name of a married daughter?"

She lowered herself to tell me the married name of her daughter and sure enough that was the folder, but the edits weren't there. This seemed odd so I asked the photoshop editor about it in the back room. She said yeah, "they wanted a deceased son added and I did that a few months ago and emailed the proofs. This is the folder."

I went back to the front and proudly said "Here it is, it was finished and emailed a couple of months ago." Granny says, "I know that that's not true" I'm thinking, well here's the file, I'll just check the file properties to find out. Sure enough, oct 16th 5:13pm. I tell her the date. "That's not true" I guess she's a big fan of Colbert and is going with her gut on this one. I say to her. "So I went back there and in literally 30 seconds while I was gone, I did all that photoshopping and changed the date on the computers so that I could spoof the file system into thinking that I made the file on Oct 13 at 5:13pm?"

I said, "It's possible that your daughter didn't get the email, maybe her spam filters blocked it or something."

She says, "It's not true that you did that back in October." I say, "Well, whatever, it doesn't matter when it was done, just that she didn't get the email. What is her email address." I don't know what came over me expecting this lady to know her daughter's email address. She said, "I'll have to go home and get it."
"No, just tell me her phone number and I'll call to ask her." I said. "It's long distance." She tells me.

At this point I'm just so frustrated at this woman that I say, "It's what like two cents a minute? It's costing my boss ten times that for me to talk to you and we're in the very same room. We can afford it."

So she figures out the phone number and I call. The granny takes my word for it that we actually will email the proof out this time and leaves. I go back to the photoshopper to make sure the email gets sent and low and behold the old email is still in the sent box so we just resend it. By the way the date on the old email was Oct.13 5:26pm. I guess our photoshopper had a smoke in between the editing and the emailing.

I just thought to myself, I bet this lady feels like people are trying to get the best of her ALL THE TIME. If you think people are constantly trying to pull a fast one on you, guess what, they're not. You're just a pessimistic jerk. They don't care about you. We all just want to go through our lives as smoothly as possible. I don't understand how we could have possibly benefited from dragging our feet on this lady's order. We have to do the work before they'll place and order and we can get paid. It just doesn't make sense.

That being said, my boss is one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet. A WWII vet came in a couple of months ago to get some pictures of his Uncle's WWI medals, and we gave him what he wanted for free. My boss shot a wedding a year and a half ago and the groom passed away in some sort of accident shortly after the wedding and so my boss gave the order for free. It must have been close to $1000 at least. Then the mother called two days ago to place another $500 order and he wanted to give her that one for free, but she politely declined his offer. We don't need to gouge people we just want to do a good service for a fair price and treat people nicely. That war vet was very pleased with his photo. The mother is very pleased with the way she has been treated. There are a few crazy people out there that you just can't please no matter what you try.

-Gary