Wow. This is one of those occasions when I wish I
could portray in person what I went through yesterday at good ol’ Office Depot
here in Galveston. Now before I begin I
want to hasten to say that they have done really good work for us in the past,
and I expect greater things from them in the future. That being said …
Early
Wednesday morning I took in the master mock-up of our Easter sunrise service
handout booklet. It has the order of
worship and the words to the songs. I
worked really hard to get the pages just right and ran a full copy of the
booklet just as we wanted it printed so they could follow along. I even made a digital copy to make it easier
for them to transfer it to their printer.
Not exactly rocket science if I can do that much, is it? All I asked for was 400 copies on the proper
pages, folded and stapled. The girl who
waited on me told me she would even check online and find me some discounts to
bring the price down. She said to come
back in at 5 p.m. on Thursday and she would have them ready for pick up.
Thursday
morning I got a call from them asking if someone would be coming by to
pay. I told them the arrangement, so
they skeptically accepted my statement and hung up. Later in the day I got another day from them This time they said my order was all printed
and all they had to do was cut them. She
said that twice, “cut them.” After the
second time I stopped her and asked what it was she was cutting. “Your 4 X 6 index cards.” Yep.
Not my order. She apologized profusely
and quickly hung up.
As
5:00 came around I hurried over to see what sort of magic had been worked on
our booklets. Sur enough, as I approached
the desk, I saw the familiar cover strewn about. OK.
They were obviously not ready yet.
I got in closer and to my surprise, and horror, the booklets that had
been “completed” were totally unusable.
First off, they were stapled haphazardly from front to back instead of
in the center at the fold. And when they
were opened the formatting had been drastically changed. Fonts were different sizes. Page numbers were located in the center of
the page. The entire print of the front
page wasn’t even on the front page.
There was no way anyone could have looked at that mess and assumed it
was what the customer wanted. But my
salesgirl did. I asked to see the
booklet master I had provided, and I showed it to her again. She replied, “But the digital file you gave
me came out like this,” gesturing to the pile of paper on the counter.
It
didn’t take long for the manager to come over to try to smooth things out. I guess he heard me the third or fourth time
I said that what had been done was totally useless to me. He gently pushed her aside when she tried to
blame me. Now he understood immediately
what the problem was and set out to fix it.
He entered the digital file and did some simple reformatting there on the
spot. Wouldn’t let me leave until what
he printed out matched my master booklet and was approved by my own eyes. Once that was done I requested that the
stapling be done properly as well. He assured
me he would see that it was taken care of, but I’m still a little uneasy about
that one. Now the booklets are scheduled
to be ready Saturday morning. They will
be seeing me not long after their 8 a.m. opening time. And the thing is, I still haven’t paid for them,
so I have no idea how much all of this will cost the church. Ah, well.
Must mean God has something special planned for this sunrise service if
Satan is so intent on messing it up. We’ll
see …
Revelation
19:1 says, “After this I heard what
sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our
God’”
Father,
will you add the folks over at Office Depot to your watch list? Give them wisdom and common sense as they
work on our order, and give them peace in their own lives as well. Amen.
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