Petty tyrant printer
So I had a good time last night at a launch party for a new magazine I designed (New England Watershed, a magazine of "ideas, culture, and art" for the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire). A huge highlight was meeting my client's new advertising representative, who had worked as a customer service
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Years ago, when a friend and I worked for the same publishing company, we had a print vendor that we'd use only for the 'quick and dirty' jobs -- postcards, cover letters, that sort of thing. We called him "Dirty Eddie." And he was. He was also my friend's cousin-in-law, which is why he got the work.
We couldn't trust him as far as we could throw him. If he had the chance he'd behave prety much in the same way as your Petty Tyrant. When he begged Scott for the work, Scott's then-wife threatened Dirty Eddie with financial ruin if he screwed with us. She could be chillingly intimidating, and Eddie was the type of guy who interpreted any threat as a potential de-balling, so it worked out.
I've been lucky to have worked with some wonderful printer's reps over the years, mostly because we've stuck together through job changes and that sort of thing. Only a few bad eggs here and there.
I don't deal with printers often anymore as I only have a couple of clients that use me for design. Which is good because I'm really... not. But they don't seem to know the difference. And that's the same reason why companies like your Petty Tyrant's stay in biz, I suppose -- he knows his a fair percentage of his customers don't know what they're looking at. What a jerk.
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