Work

I've been at it for almost 3 months now, embroidering and printing on shirts. I have money because of it, but I didn't enjoy most of my summer. It isn't a normal retail job, where I deal with customers the whole day. Instead I only get the terrible customers and the great ones. There are none in between. For example, my current customer.
Me- "What can I help you with?"
Customer- "I'm an architect. You don't need to ask me those questions."
First thought- "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?"
Second thought- "Okay. I have better things to do anyways."

Really. I do get my helping of the worst. However, this process is so strange that if I don't get the worst, then I end up getting people who have done it before and really know exactly what they want and how they want it. I'm not kidding when I say that there is no middle ground. Even that lady from earlier this week went from one extreme to another without so much as touching anything in between. This is part of where my madness lies. When a person walks in, I don't know whether to hate them or love them, until they've already starting making their order. One person made it really hard to tell. She came in and was really easy going, and then came back a couple days later with the person who actually cared about the order, and looked over my shoulder for half an hour to make sure his graphic was perfect. This job is a roller-coaster ride between having to apologize for not getting everything perfect and having to hear apologies about not knowing what they want on the clothing. Sometimes both happen at the same time, because they don't know what they want, but they know that what they have isn't it.

Anyways, I loved my job. It's fairly light on the customers, so dealing with the bad ones really does feel worth it to me. I just didn't love the not having free time, but I believe that the free time I have later on will be better with the money I am earning now.

Customers

Sometimes they suck. People. It's not who they are, but what they do. So far, twice this week alone, someone has called 10 minutes before closing to ask if I can stay open for them. I'm nice and I say yes, but it's exhausting. This is my job. You need to realize that I do this because I need money. I don't do this for fun. Please respect that I want to get out of here just as much as you want to get out of your office.

Anecdote time!
Yesterday at 5:52 I was just starting to pack up when the phone rang. I answered it. The lady on the other end of the line asked how late we were staying open. I told her 10 more minutes, because I didn't want to sounds stingy by saying 8. She said she could get here in 8 minutes. I thought that was a cool statement. By using a number that isn't in some interval of 5, it seemed like she actually knew how long it might take. No. She got in at about 6:08. That is 16 minutes. 16 does not equal 8. This felt bad. She didn't get into the store until a time when I would normally already be on the train out of here. This does not bode well. Then she proceeded to ask me what fonts I have. I had to hold in a sigh as hard as I could. Font selection is inevitably a 15 minute ordeal. Most people feel the need to see every single font, and then evaluate their top 15 selections. Fun stuff. Then she had to decide between brown and grey thread, which she called copper and taupe. Grey does not equal taupe. I think she might have had fading eyesight. She decided on the brown. We actually have colors called copper and taupe, but she didn't want to see those. Now I'm afraid to see what the finished result is going to look like. I surely hope that she likes it. I will not be responsible if she thinks it looks bad. I suggested tons of options to her. This is her creation. I'm just the man with the machines that do what she tells them to do. By the time we got through the color, font, and size selection, it was already 6:28. She didn't leave until after 6:30 and I didn't leave until after 6:45.

Now I wonder. Would this lady stay at her work for an extra half of an hour so that I can browse randomly through their selection books? I don't really want an answer. I just want people to put themselves in my shoes. I like going home at 7 rather than leaving for home at 7. I don't enjoy losing my free time. It's also frustrating that I have tons of time with nothing to do and no one around, but they always show up right before work ends. I understand they have jobs too, but if I need to go to the bank, then I use my lunch hour. I don't beg the bank to stay open another half hour. I suppose that my workplace isn't like a bank, but they are both service stores. The bank sells money insurance and safety. We sell embroidery and screen printing.

There are many customer that I really like. I just feel like this lady isn't one of them. There are others that frustrate me too. I like it when people know what they want. I understand that sometimes people just want to come in and browse, but please don't use my time to do that. Use my on-the-clock hours. Basically, I'm asking that I get paid for the work I'm doing, rather then getting paid to sit around (which is less fun than sitting around at home where I have TV), and not getting paid to actually help customers (since I get no overtime payment).

UPDATE:
The crazy lady that annoyed me yesterday came in again today. I pointed out one or two fonts and she picked one instantly. I made up a sample that she loved and she even went to go buy another product from us that she also wants embroidered. I really don't hate her anymore. I actually feel bad for hating her earlier. I was wrong.

Running a Shop Alone

Woah. This is a bit more than I expected. I have to make sure to handle multiple customers coming in at the same time. I even have to make sure to handle one customer coming in at the same time.

Customers... They kind of annoy me. One pair came in and they were arguing about the shirt they wanted the entire time. I thought they had a nice design, but it had a heart in it and they didn't want to pay for art charges. I guess I could look if there's a heart in wingdings. But they asked for Bookman. I can give them that font. Now what color do you want the printing in? Red. What kind of red? Oh... It doesn't matter. Okay. I think I'm going to go with a cherry red or a cardinal red. Hopefully they will like it. So I'm going to have to send the design out to the screen printer and have the warehouses ship the shirts there too. Then they'll come into the shop, I'll fold them, and the customer will receive a bag from me that contains all the wonderful they were willing to pay for. I hope they like what they ordered. Otherwise... I won't be responsible for the rage that ensues.

Also, a guy came in asking about tote bags. I haven't seen him since. Another wanted me to embroider a medicine ball. I told him the sand would fall out. He asked if I could print on it. I said I'd look at the ball, and unfortunately had to tell him I couldn't fit a foot diameter ball on a vinyl press machine if I couldn't empty it first. Doesn't press imply that it has to be flat? I'll never understand what goes through their heads.

Well, now I understand why my boss said people are so difficult. I mean the lady who said she needed napkins by Friday still hasn't come in to pick them up yet. I'm just going to have to handle being able to give people things, without being 100% certain what they actually want. Most of the time my boss does it and the customers love it. I suppose I'll learn how to in due time. I can use it as part of my practice. I will learn how to not know everything. I will learn how to not argue with people. I will be able to train myself over two weeks using people I will be paid to deal with.

HTML

If you want to learn a really simple computer language, learn HTML. It takes about 4 minutes to memorize every single function you can do in it. There aren't many things HTML can do, and that's okay. It was designed purely to be functional in getting information through the internet and to the end user. There is no need for form or beauty if your goal is to move data.

Then there's CSS. It's a little bit harder, but it's for design rather than function. This means that you can specify numbers of pixels for sizes and distances. There are many very specific formatting options in CSS.

Then there's Javascript. It's quite a bit harder than either HTML or CSS but there are many things that require quite a bit more than those two, so I understand the increase in difficulty. In general there are things a programming language can do that HTML and CSS just can't. They can't evaluate functions, provide interactive information, or do many other things that most people just take for granted on the web. Javascript is more ingrained in the net than most people realize.

I learned HTML and CSS is because my boss asked me to redesign the web page. I started with trying to build an acceptable layout. Then, I decided that making a virtual layout would work much better and be better at showing my layout ideas. 2 days later, I know HTML. Once again, the 2 days of work doesn't surprise me because I know that there isn't all too much to do in HTML. Then I went to CSS, which took me about a day. A lot of it was just figuring out the synonyms between HTML and CSS. They have a lot of redundant features, and I'm told that I should use CSS if there's a choice between the two.

Now I have a rough draft of what the design would look like on paper and on a screen. Still, I need to be able to refine that into a working piece of the internet. However, I'm expecting my boss to just use one of those drag and drop applications because he wouldn't want to deal with HTML every time he wants to change his website. All my work will be for naught, but that's okay, because I still learned something and provided a layout for building off of when my boss actually does decide to buy the drag and drop software.

The Job Thickens

The title is a pun if you know that we're now working on 3D embroidery. It's like regular embroidery, but with foam padding underneath to give it a squishy feel and a pop out look. It's very interesting. I don't know if I would every want it on any embroideries myself, but I can definitely see the appeal to many customers. Also, it is much more fun to do 3D embroideries than those boring 2D ones. It's fun peeling the foam and it's fun squishing the final product.

We also did an applique yesterday. We actually did two, but the first didn't turn out to well. The part that's interesting to me is that the applique material is made out of polyester so I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to sublimate onto it. Then we would have full color appliques to be embroidered upon any clothing type.

My most recent job is working on the Ballyhoo store website. It isn't an easy task, being that I've never done website design before, but I like to think that I can be an objective judge of what looks good and what doesn't. I know this varies from person to person, but right not the Ballyhoo store site looks like a back alley of the internet. This isn't to be mean, as I see my blog as a back alley of the net. I just mean to say that it doesn't look like a viewed page. It doesn't look accessible. My job here is to change that. I think I can do that. He says he wants a complete site redesign, but I'm still not sure what he wants changed and what he wants the same. He says it should be changed from the ground up, but I'm still not entirely sure what that means. For one thing, we should get rid of the cloudy background. There should be something more fashionable and much less distracting. I suppose I should figure out how to reinvent the site, rather than seeing if I can muddle with the code until it looks good. Well, off to work I go.

My Job

Would you believe it? I work in an embroidery shop. A store called Ballyhoo. We create promotional products for companies at (what I would consider) reasonable fees. We make custom shirts, hats, jackets, bags, pens, blankets, and many other things. We even have a snuggie type product called a couch potato that we can embroider. A custom shirt that says whatever you want costs only $15 (including the price of the shirt) and if you buy in bulk the price goes down pretty quickly.


So now that I'm done shamelessly plugging the store I work in, I'd like to tell about some of the things I do here at my place of work. Yesterday I came into work. I put a couple shirts on a couple machines and embroidered out the pattern we had to do for the customer. It was just some simple words. Then we had to test out another logo on the embroidery machines. That was actually quite fun and the logo doesn't look too bad. All in all those things took up my morning and a bit of the afternoon, so then I had lunch. The next thing I had to do was figure out how to make a rhinestone pattern. I spent the rest of the day doing that. You'd be surprised how hard it is to rhinestone. It's much more difficult than you'd think. Fortunately it doesn't require individual placement on the clothing. Unfortunately, it does require individual placement on a computer program, Corel Draw. It's much like Adobe Illustrator, except it is made by Corel. I think that's the biggest reason that people don't buy it. Another reason may be that its user interface is incredibly convoluted compared to most Adobe products.

So, yesterday I spent half my day rhinestoning (The act of placing rhinestone. Its now a word). And the entirety of this morning was spent creating an embroidery pattern for the final fantasy 7 logo, the meteor. Yeah... I get paid to do this. But truthfully, it's a ton harder than you would think it is. I really wouldn't be doing this for fun. However, I don't not enjoy it. Basically, if I was elsewhere, I would be gaming, but here I have no problem digitizing (The act of turning a logo into embroidery machine readable data. This already was a word. I didn't invent it).

Also, if you want a shirt I hear that friends and family get discounts. Call, click, or come in today to the Ballyhoo store of embroidery and screen printing (and tons of other shirt writing methods)! I guess I wasn't done shamelessly plugging the store.