Murphy's law at it's finest! (It's a lenghty one!)

[Gilligan]

So, I have 400 shirts, 50 thongs and 50 booty shorts to print for a business neighbor for their 4/20 celebration (and 25 hats, that can wait).  150 (3 color front / 1 color back on black shirts) due at 10am and 250 (2 color front / 1 color back on black shirts) due at 3pm.  I've got art work for one job but not the other... the art work for the one I have is beautifully vectorized, this client got it together!  He's found out that his current web based printer isn't going to meet his deadline and asked me to do it... wants to use me since we are neighbors... I can dig it!  He's gonna get me the missing art work "tonight" (this was days ago).  Didn't get it, I see his employee that got me the other artwork and ask him.  "I can't find it, the boss is supposed to get it I think".  Text message him... nothing.  Finally talk to him on the phone "text me an email and I'll get it over to you...." then the dreaded 4 words, "...it's on my phone."  Maybe it's an attachment on email on his phone? <fingers crossed>

Nope, 30k jpg.  So now the wife is redrawing artwork anyway and I've had one of their older shirts for days that she could have used.

So finally get films printed and I spend 3 hours burning 9 screens (because my process is incredibly slow... *hint hint Brad hint hint*

As I'm pulling the screens out the booth I'm seeing a couple of pin holes on each screen... this is the first time I've had pin holes... yay!

So, I start prepping for the job, taping up screens blah blah blah... kick on the flash unit and dryer.  After a few more minutes of lining up screens and taping, I got check to see what temp the dryer has gotten up to.  Oh, 75 degrees, WHAT?!  GREAT, the panel with the temp probe is out... that means I can't even really run with just two panels because there is no temp regulation going on.  Grrr!

Dig around for my socket and of course things have all been moved... finally find it and pull the panel apart and, no big deal the terminal that connects to the element is out.  I have another ring terminal right here... where is my bolt to attach it... umm... umm... umm. Crap, I can't find it.  Run off to the hardware store with the ring terminals in hand to find some stainless bolts small enough to fit it.  Of course no one wants to help you at the store unless it's almost closing time, then you get everyone that passes by asking you if you need help... ugg.  Finally find what I need, back to the house.

Get the panel repaired and back in, no problem.  Now it's almost 8 or 9?  I don't know, and I don't really have time to check.  Oh, and I need gray mixed!  And I need to eat something!  Wife makes gray while I eat.  My mother is over having some schooling for the baby so that is helpful.

I start to print a bit and all is going ok... but I'm so bad at my technique that it's taking me 3 strokes on the underbase gray (It's also serving as a small grey element so has to be solid in that one spot at least), flash (that is the one thing that went well... the antec 18x24 w/ air and autobase is AWESOME!) and then hit the red and the top white (TWICE).

Oh, look some emulsion "film" must have pooled at the bottom of some of the letters and blocked up the screen as it's not printing.  I try screen opener and no go.  I had to break out the spot gun and tape off the emulsion right next to the spot I'm trying to open up.  It works actually.  Then after printing a few shirts, I feel I have registration issues that I try to fix on press... yeah, that took a bit of playing with.  NOW, it looks good!  But boy am I slow!!  At BEST I'm doing 50 seconds a shirt... usually 60 seconds at at times a bit more if I didn't get lucky and load the shirt on fairly straight from jump.

My mom offers to help, so she is catching shirts and stacking them for me and spot gunning the couple of holes I developed on the edge where I didn't get a good coat and I didn't tape up.

About 75% through the fronts I find a nice 4" rip down the front of one of the shirts (gildans, his choice), oh well... I got a sample shirt for myself and he'll be short a shirt... F' it!  So my mother stays and helps till 1am and finally goes home and volunteers to come back in the morning to help some more.  WHEW!  HUGE help.  I still have like 40 XL's to print the fronts on.  I finally get done with that and then go stack those up and bring the pile over and start printing the backs.  It's going obviously MUCH faster with just a print flash print, but boy I'm starting to feel it!  I'm now running at a more "usual" pace of 30 seconds a shirt and the print looks pretty good (one hit under base and two hits top coat).

It's amazing how that stack of shirts doesn't seem to shrink.  My mom has them stacked my size... so as I'm going through the larges on each shirt I'm glancing at the tag of the next one on the pile thinking... that has to be an M... ugg, another L.  Over and over... I'm questioning my sanity and if I didn't maybe pull too many shirts for this job... it can't take THIS long to go through 40 shirts.. I had to have already printed 50 Larges or so it felt.  Finally get into the mediums and it's beating me up... I'm getting tired, it's 3am and I'm starting to hurt a bit.  So, after the Mediums I'll take a small break.  I finally get through that mountain of mediums and all I have left is 40 smalls.  I take a 5 minute break and go sit down outside and stretch  (oh, btw, I realized my AC has broken in the shop while setting up for this job... freon leak, but I'll have to fix that later!)  Back to printing... I get 10 shirts into that stack and throw in the towel... I can't go any more.  Oh and I pulled a shirt after only putting the underbase, so I had to dig into some boxes and find some replacements... I'd have shorted the order for a gildan f' up but not because of mine.  So I find some Jersey stuff I have stocked and grab the right sizes and reprinted those.

I shut everything down (waiting for the dryer to cool down) and come inside at 5am.

8:45am I wake up and realize I can't do the 250 pcs... it's not possible.  It some how took me 8 hours to print 150 shirts, no way I can do 250 shirts by this afternoon!  So I start making phone calls.  I finally get a guy that will take the job... WHEW!  But his contract prices are ummm... rough.  There goes 80% of the profit of this job.  Oh well, it has to be done.

So I jump out there and finish printing the last 30 smalls and start sorting, folding and boxing that job.  Load the car, run around the corner to the first location and drop off those shirts (they are literally next door to my store where I'd bring the shirts to be picked up anyway).  Then off to the contract shop and drop the other blanks off and profusely thank the guy for helping me out!  He said "probably be done about 3pm"... PERFECT!

We go grab lunch and head back to the shop to set up for the booty shorts and thongs.

Change out pallets and put pallet tape on (I had only used one youth pallet since I got the press).  These (thongs) are going MUCH MUCH faster.  Loading them is a piece of cake.  Only issue is they have large seams that give me a bit of an issue with the ink deposit.  Oh, well, it is what it is and I do my best to minimize any issues... but it's grey on black and small... so it's not too bad.  I can accept it.  I might have should have set them up sideways if possible.  Blaze through those at like 20 seconds a piece.

On to the Booty shorts front print.  Same image, so I move the print over to where it needs to be for the booty shorts and strike off a test print... Looks fine.  So as I swing the pallet around my mother goes "ohh... you should have finished printing the thongs before moving that... I forgot to hit the 2nd print on the last 3 thongs... Ughh... So we print a single short anyway to check out the placement and mark the spot on the frame so we can get it close to back quickly.  Then I attempt to line up the print again... knowing it won't work... then realizing... the print is GOOD ENOUGH to pass and pull all three with just the underbase.  So now I didn't really need to mark and move the screen again.  Get it back and start printing.

These aren't as fast because they load a little funky and have some extra slack in them... but I get in a rhythm and get it going... probably 30 seconds a piece.  Getting the fronts done my mother yells across the dryer, careful, you printed this front on the back.  Great.  Though he accidentally doubled his order so shorting him one won't be that much of an issue.  She tries to spot gun that out and it's of course not happening... I convince her to give up. haha.  Luckily she said something because there was one other randomly upside down garment in there that I would have printed backwards if she hadn't caught that one.

It's 4 something and I haven't heard from the contract guy... Yeah, I'm past my deadline but that is the opening time for the BAR... hopefully for me it's a slow start for them.  So, I make a call real quick and they are printing them now and almost done... be there at 5pm  "You guys close at 5 right?"  Yeah, but it will get done.  Ok.

Now onto the backs.  This will go faster as it's easier to line them up.  Only problem is a HUGE seam right down the middle right where my print is.  It doesn't look terrible and it is what it is.  I print them up and I'm ok with the print... I'd liked it to have been a TAD better but it's cool.  I get moving pretty quickly with these... I'm guessing 20 seconds a piece on them.  As I'm printing I realize I'm not gonna make it through them for 4:45, so I have my mother call while I keep printing to see if they will stay till 5:15 as I think I can be done at 5.  He will.

Done at almost 5 exactly, box them up quickly (not hard since they all fit in a shoe box practically) and hit the road... err, I mean traffic.  GREAT!

I call him up tell him my location and tell him I will be there soon, I got a few short cuts I'm gonna hit.  They are actually "long cuts" but I call them "quick cuts" because you go around your elbow to scratch your a$$ but it's MUCH faster than sitting at lights, plus I'd rather be driving than sitting.

Get to his shop for 5:23 and get the shirts... they look good.  While I'm there I spot a display clothing rack outside and ask if he's chunking it (they recently downsized their show room to almost nothing).  He said, I don't even know what it is, but if it's outside, it's yours.  While loading the car, he was like "Oh, yeah... you can have that... If I get rid of anything else, I'll let you know"... SWEET!  The wife wanted one of these and it's the perfect size and in great shape!  There is a bonus to the story. LOL

The bar is around the corner so I drive straight there and drop off the shirts... luckily the band is just setting up and no one is actually in the bar yet except employees and owner.  Drop off shirts, he is happy and I am DONE!

Holy crap... what an awful job.  I hated almost every minute of it.

Here is the one thing that I really learned from this job (some will be upset that I didn't learn more... but it all relates, just me)....

I NEED an auto!  LOL

So I'm shopping right now!

[Gilligan]

BTW, I'm sure this is run of the mill issues for you guys, but it was my first big job that I printed myself that was this "complicated" and first time I was REALLY under a time crunch like this.

[mk162]

I know how you feel, I ran into this situation this week as well.

175 shirts, 5 color front and 1 color back, the order ends up coming in on Friday due to a shipping problem...like them not actually shipping the day before, and it's a 3 day ship.

So the job is ready to print when the shirts arrive but as we are running we get a pinhole in a screen, we tape it out, but the tape outline is showing up in the print...no dice.  Se we block it out, but some of the blockout got in the image, so we tried cleaning and took the emulsion off the screen...time for a reshoot.  We finished everything up FINALLY around 3:30 for a customer pickup at 4.

[Shawn (EIP)]

I hear you on the auto... I'm embarassed to admit this but I'm extreamely backed up and next day shipping everything is killing my profits. I've been working 14 hour days all week , maybe seeing my kids for 30 minutes a day and dealing with a stressed out women becuase she can't catch a break from them and ofourse they are misbehaving like crazy. I have a few customers breathing down my neck right now too...  ran out of screens , cleaned screens to 3am last night , coating them in the AM just now almost back on press waiting for burned screens to dry. Holy crap!!!  Stressed the efff out!!! I'm playing too many parts in the little 1 man business of mine... I need an auto and about 3 hired workers if I'm going to make it through this season with my sanity intact.

Isnt it funny how my problems reversed since 8 months ago when I was afraid I would have to shut my doors? This business is strange! Stressed if you do stressed if you dont.

[Gilligan]

Endless... why not sub out some of that work to some contract printers?

Just get caught up and some breathing room.

Eat your profit on next day shipping or on contract printing... end the end it's all a wash to the bottom line of the bank account but not to your sanity and your family.

We get stretched pretty thin with all the businesses going on here and it takes a toll on us, we are lucky that it comes in spurts... so we are drowning one week but normal the next.  With a two year old neither of us can really help the other out either... so if it's a job that she has to do then I have to run off with the kid and play with her (Yeah, it's tough   ) and if it's a job I have to do then she has to watch the baby and can't help me.  My mother comes in about once a week to do some schooling stuff with her (she is a recently retired 1st grade teacher and this kid just absorbs EVERYTHING we put at her, so we are getting a huge jump... figure she'll be done with highschool by this time next year.   j/k  sorta )  Right now she comes by usually on Weds which is the wife's stay home and clean the house day so it gets the baby out of her hair so she can focus on cleaning up vs just cleaning up after the baby.

[Frog]

Many, even with years of experience, never seem to learn and remember that Mr. Murphy gets instant messages of rushes, and often bends his schedule  to make appearances.

[LuxInks]

I hear you on the auto... I'm embarassed to admit this but I'm extreamely backed up and next day shipping everything is killing my profits. I've been working 14 hour days all week , maybe seeing my kids for 30 minutes a day and dealing with a stressed out women becuase she can't catch a break from them and ofourse they are misbehaving like crazy. I have a few customers breathing down my neck right now too...  ran out of screens , cleaned screens to 3am last night , coating them in the AM just now almost back on press waiting for burned screens to dry. Holy crap!!!  Stressed the efff out!!! I'm playing too many parts in the little 1 man business of mine... I need an auto and about 3 hired workers if I'm going to make it through this season with my sanity intact.

Isnt it funny how my problems reversed since 8 months ago when I was afraid I would have to shut my doors? This business is strange! Stressed if you do stressed if you dont.

Hey Man. Just wanted to say that you would benefit greatly if you had a worked come in for 8 hours and just wash screens, clean inks and organize. If you're staying busy like you are right now, this will help you big time! Nothing like coming into work having screens clean and an organized work spot! Something that has helped us as well is, we are one day ahead. Meaning that before we leave for the day, the next days screens are burned, masked off and ready to go. We also strive to have the inks ready to go as well so that all we need to do is get it to press and print.
Glad your busy! Bank some cash, or pay off some debt, and by all means take your lovely wife out on a date!

[Gilligan]

...by all means take your lovely wife out on a date!

We did that just last night... and I will say that it was nice... much nicer than my caveman @ss expected.

She decided to go to a semi-fancy place and we had a lot of fun making fun of the pretentiousness of the place and the staff and certainly the other people eating there.  Granted, the food was surprisingly good (which is good given that we know the head chef).