posted
Get up. Out of dogfood !#%^@! Go get the dogfood and as I am loading the food into the turck, the wind comes up and the cart takes off down the hill in the parking lot. It hits the curb, jumps it and ends up in the street, where a car hits it doing 20 mph. I exit stage right, fast. OK. I got to go install that 5x2 dibond panel sign at the Chevy store that I painted yesterday afternoon. Piece of cake. Load up with all the necessary tools and miss every light over there and notice cops everywhere as I am thinking about the grocery cart disaster. I get to the Chevy store to pop in the sign in the steel frame already there for the past 30 years. The sign supply place cut the metal 6 inches too tall. Drive back the 13 miles and make the two cuts on the table saw. Amazingly, I had left enough empty space around. Drive back. Put the sign in the frame and notice water has obviously frozen over the years in the square steel framing and is now rounded out just enough that the sign still does not fit. Run to the hardware store to get a rasp. I buy the world's most expensive rasp and go back. The wind has blown over the sign onto the driveway and someone drove over it. Still flat, but a couple nice scrapes on the white painted letters. Pop up the sign into the frame, after rasping for ten minutes and drill the 6 holes. Metal shavings stick into my left thumb. Brought the wrong bit. Still make the holes work, somehow and reach for the stainless screws and nuts. Too short! Go back to the hardware store and get the world's most expensive box of stainless screws a bit longer. Go back and discover they are metric and my nuts are not. Go back to the hardware store. Exchange for the right ones. Go back and the wind blows the step ladder over onto the back of a new Camaro. No damage, amazingly, but scares the devil out of me. Prop it back up and finish installing the screws and nuts with washers. Look for the can of bright red lettering enamel in the truck. Oh yeah, I used it on Monday in the studio and it is still back in the studio. Find an old can that the lid has been off of for a year. Scrape up the hardened guts and I get one drop of red paint. Dob it onto one of the screws, then drop the brush into the dirt. Say ten bad words. Go back to the old can and manage to squeeze out another couple of drops and get the screws barely covered. Touch up the white letters. Stand back and all looks fairly OK. Put the tools back in the truck and reach for the camera to take the pic. Forgot the camera, It is back here on my desk @!$%**. Take the bill into the store. "Oh you need Craig to sign off on this and he will be back next week!"
All of this grief makes my face screw sideways as I look at the asst. manager. He stands up and says he will go try to get a check. "The lady just went to lunch." I drive down to the Toyota store where I am supposed to be two hours earlier painting their windows. "John is off today...can you come back tomorrow?" Yeah right. Like he has to be there to watch me paint the darn sign already approved? I snap lines and the chalk line breaks. Reach for the other snapline and it got wet in the rain the other night. Remember I left the drill back at the Chevy store on the grass. Argh. Pull out 20 feet from the dry line and retie it, knowing it will be a problem. As I am doing this, the wind picks up and deposits the line already pulled out into a water puddle. Ok. Both hands on the wheel. Go back to the truck and dig deeper. Find an old one that still works and get the lines snapped. Then some guy, I never met, comes out and tells me they want to change the design. I go in and they make me wait ten minutes for the guy to get off the phone. He basically tells me I have to wait til the other guy gets back. I smile, leave and go back to the Chevy store. Grab the drill. They hand me the check, but it does not match my invoice by $100. "Oh, she must have made a mistake and she just left for the bank" (probably with my hundred bucks!). I go to get a drink of water. The water fountain is broken and they just ran out of coffee. ARGH! I wait twenty more minutes and the bank lady comes back. She is embarrassed and claims she made a mistake. She takes the first check and vanishes for another 30 minutes. I wait. One young salesman asks me if I am ready to trade off my new truck. Finally, I get the check and head home. As I drive out I notice that the new sign I just installed is leaning a bit. What next?
I get home, take a few deep breaths, pet the dog and go call on a very slow acting Ford store who suddenly wants a $2000 window sign, a bunch of web work, "Do the Used Car building as well", we also need a wall painted behind the body shop with 'some kind of friendly message'...maybe a mural or something and by the way, got any more of those old car paintings?" I smile and realize that my luck has finally turned for today! Ahh. Get home to design the Ford windows and another client calls up and orders $2400 worth of work. When it rains hard, the sunshine looks so good when it comes back out!
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1561 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- Lynda Yoder Wayne Yoder Signs & Designs 4735 List Rd Grass Lake, MI 5176884951 Posts: 154 | From: Grass Lake, MI | Registered: Feb 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
I got up this morning and said three "Hail Von Dutch" chants, hoping the bad luck gremlins were still gone. Both hands on the wheel, 10 and 2. Buckle the seat belt... Drove over to the Ford store to wrap up the big new window sign. Made almost all the green lights. Hmm. No broken windows at the Ford store and the new Car manager actually offered me a cup of fresh coffee. Double checked all the spelling and somehow the spellcheck in my brushes must be working again. Wrapped it up with no drips, no runs and no errors. Walked carefully to the truck and went to lunch. Whew! Think I killed off the grmlins at last. Thank you, Von Dutch!
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1561 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've had days like that Preston. Still doing lots of car dealership stuff, I see. Most of my dealerships fell off within the last few years. I've been doing other stuff, still staying busy but not as much with the dealerships. I'm just happy you didn't strangle anyone , like the "oh we have to change the design" guy. I might have throat-chopped him after a day like that.
posted
It never does any good to react to these guys, as unfortunately, I am getting older and older than most of the new car dog managers. If I hold my cool, they usually get over their control issues and let me do what I do best. Years ago someone told to never get mad, but even. When one of them jerks me around, I seem to charge them more the next time using the old 'five' rule. Just charge them a little more for the next five times. They never can tell the difference.
It is interesting about the car dogs as it seems more and more of them are going after that clean look or using perforated and boring window graphics. "We like to be able to see out our windows..." I know that will not last as slowly, I am seeing a few come back and tell me they want to fluoro look and bombastic as the dickens. In 21 years of just doing the car dogs, nothing really ever changes. I have been aroubd the car biz all my life and really, it is the same as it was in the 50s. They got to sell iron this month or heads will roll. It also helps that now I know all the head guys who were just beginners 20 years ago. It does help to stay at the grindstone and remember names. Faces? They too get older!
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1561 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just did a huge going out of business splash. I still love doing them, much more fun than doing digital, but I do both to be diverse, gotta pay the bills. Digital printing is easy money.
posted
I have learned in doing "Going out of business" signs to get the moeny upfront....duh.
-------------------- Preston McCall 112 Rim Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 text: 5056607370 Posts: 1561 | From: Santa Fe, New Mexico | Registered: Nov 1998
| IP: Logged |
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Rolling On The Floor]](graemlins/rolf.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic