end of the line

I work for a commercial printer that produces advertising circulars for retail stores — mostly supermarkets — across the country. In addition to guys that run the actual printing presses and folks who design and layout the ads (like me), my employer also employs a team of salespeople to acquire more business. It appears to work. In the short time I have worked there, we have picked up several new clients. Just this past February, we began producing circulars for a small chain of gourmet supermarkets whose locations spread across northern New Jersey and into Long Island, New York. Without mentioning them by name, they operate on a similar level as the famed D'Agostino's, the popular chain that has served Manhattan since the 1930s. I have done advertising work for a lot of retail customers over the past 40 years. While I can't make a fair comparison to D'Agostino's (because I have never done work for them), in comparison to other retail chains, our newest customer is unorganized, scatterbrained and chaotic. In other words.. typical.

In an effort to conceal any identifying 
characteristics of the company in question,
here is a picture of a duck.

When we began our business relationship, my boss and I got on a Zoom call with members of their marketing team. Through the magic of the internet, we "met" the inhouse design staff at the chain's headquarters. There were two guys — a talkative fellow named Michael and a quieter guy named Kevin. Michael explained that information, comments, instruction and the electronic delivery of specific artwork would be made via an online tool called Ziflow. Through this ingenious tool, we were sent fully-designed pieces of art and copy that could just be dropped in to the ad we were working on. These little images were created by either Michael or Kevin. They could be a banner offering a sale on deli meats or a larger image announcing a special in their seafood department. Bottom line, the more pre-composed art we were supplied with, the less composition work I had to do.

We received comments regarding placement of ad elements, product substitutions and other pertinent information from someone named Emily in their Marketing department. Until we didn't....and we were informed that Emily was no longer with the company.

After a month or so (that's six weeks of ads), we stopped receiving art or any type of correspondence from Michael. Everything came exclusively through Kevin. One afternoon, we learned that Michael had been fired. "Oh well," I thought, "Things happen." 

Kevin stepped up his game and supplied us with art, required product photos and other information. After two weeks of Kevin flying solo, another Zoom meeting was scheduled so we could "meet" Will, who would be Kevin's assistant. Our virtual meeting lasted just a few minutes. We greeted Will and offered a friendly "Looking forward to working with you" to our new contact.

Approximately three weeks after "meeting" Will, my boss got a strange email from Kevin. It originated from a domain that was not the supermarket company's. Kevin explained that he no longer had login credentials to the Ziflow account and that he would be sending all correspondence through this email. Later that very same day, my boss was informed that Kevin had been fired and we should cease all interaction with him.

Will was now supplying graphic that had once come from Kevin and Michael before him. Will's work suitably mimicked the company's branding, however, Will's spelling was atrocious. We regularly received replacement art for graphics downloaded only minutes earlier because of a spelling error. Sometimes the same graphics would be replaced three or four times because of typos. Will also was very lax in his response time. Often several hours would pass before he would answer a simple question. Other times, his answers were incoherent and didn't apply to the question being posed. 

A week of "Will on his own" passed when we were told about Jake. Jake would be assisting Will. Efforts to schedule a virtual introduction with Jake never came to be, and although Jake was CC'd on all correspondence and  emails, he never responded to anything. We couldn't actually be sure that there was a Jake. We continued to work with Will — struggling with direction, frustrated by lengthy response time and replacing and re-replacing mistake-ridden artwork.

On Friday morning before the long Labor Day weekend, I was finishing up a list of corrections I received for the supermarket ad before its scheduled print date on the Tuesday we would return to work. Will sent me a requested photo of a pumpkin pie for the "Bakery" section, as well as a few price changes to items already appearing in in the ad.  Somewhere around 2 PM on Friday, as my workday was drawing to a close, my boss informed me that Will was no longer with the company. I had just sent a proof to the Director of Marketing hoping to get an "approval to print" before the day ended. Instead, the director told me (via email) that he would spend the weekend studying the ad and offer his approval on Tuesday.

He never mentioned Will. Or Jake.

If there even is a Jake.

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