Fuck all y'all, where y' = my employer and its contractors

If anything will be the death of me this week, it will be my job. More specifically, the death of my will be brought about by the idiots I have to deal with at work.

For instance, there's the exec who found out that another group is hosting a Ukrainian festival the weekend after our festival. Here's an email she sent Monday. (Imagine I included "[sic]" wherever you see something that would never have been typed by someone with more than fucking grade school education.)

please make sure ad is paid for and place it sio that our festival gets the beat spot. Our must be on the right side full page Color this week is possible. I have the progtram already so that I can give it to you tomorrow. IU am at [the resort where the festival is being held] today. Thioer ad should be after ours and on left side if possible. [Thank you]*

*actually she wrote "Dyakuyu" but you probably don't understand Ukrainian, so I thought I'd translate it

Yes, that's the entire text of the email, and yes, my higher-ups are territorial retards.

Today she sent another email. This one was in a bigger font, so you know she meant business. (Again, "[sic]" is implied throughout.)

Lets make sure our [festival] ad is in color and on the right side of page before their ad. They can be on the left side of a page somewhere behind ours. [THANK YOU]*

*another "dyakuyu" but this one was ALL CAPS

In other words, lets [sic] make sure we underhandedly screw with our advertisers because we feel threatened by their event which takes place a week after ours. And lets [sic] make sure you read this second email which reiterates the information in the first one, albeit typed slightly better, because there's a chance you're an idiot who can't comprehend a message unless it's pounded into your brain. If there's one thing I hate, it's to be treated like a fucking child. If there are two things I hate, the first is to be treated like a fucking child and the second is R.L., treasurer of the [blah blah] Association who can't limit her responsibilities to the scope described in her job title.

This waste of space fancies herself an amateur designer, so she downloads stock photos at 72 dpi, slaps text onto them in Corel Draw and then asks me to make them print-ready. This week I was involved in a threeway email exchange with her and the guy she contracted to print t-shirts. This printer guy is another of life's winners. He saw how out-of-the-loop R.L. kept me, so he offered to send me "the specs." When I said, "I'd love to have a copy of your specs," he re-sent me the email he sent R.L., which read in part:

Now, although Corel is an artist-program, most artists I know don't like it ...rather, they prefer Adobe Photoshop ...this seems to be the artists' standard [at least among the artists I know]...

The optimal files we're hoping for are .psd or .eps
Apart from these, secondary choices would be either .j-peg or .pfd*

*no such thing

I don't know what kind of file transfer capabilities Corel has ...but it may be possible to simply change them to any of the above settings.

When "saving" finished artwork, the optimal action is to have the design sized to scale ...and saved at 300dpi (dots per inch) At Scale (Very Important)...

That, in a nutshell, is pre-press production...
It's a wonderful thing that Programs like Corel or Photoshop have settings that allow one to save in a CMYK profile, but again, it really isn't that simple (believe me, I wish it was).
If you can get me these files in any of the formats listed above (.psd, .eps, etc.), that would be wonderful.

"In a nutshell"? Thanks. You've told me exactly nothing. If a fucking banker asks you for design specs, it's safe to assume she's a useless idiot. If a graphic designer asks you for specs, it's safe to assume he's using Photoshop. When I asked for specs, I was hoping there'd be some information about image dimensions, transparency/opacity ... you know, specs.

And let's get something straight, disphit: Sending you the files as psd's or eps's doesn't mean shit. Psd's and eps's aren't some magical file formats; ff the layers haven't been separated or if the image is flattened, a psd or an eps is as useless as a child' fridge drawing. And you know what, sending you a file saved in a CMYK is indeed "that simple." I took R.L.'s images (which were 72 dpi and like 40" by 40"*), converted them from RGB to CMYK, and separated the color channels into separate layers. It took me less than five goddamn minutes. It's ironic that this guy is a simpleton and can't recognize simplicity, but I shouldn't expect much from a guy who uses the phrase "j-pegs." It's like he has to type phonetically or some shit.

*if I had some goddamn real specs, I'd know what dimensions an image should be for a screened t-shirt. Thanks again, asshole!

So I sent him one of our images which I'd separated into layers: one layer each for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The black layer was on top, but get this: because there was no black in the image (I mean, none at all; it was a very bright, colorful image), the black was blank, ie all white. Why all white? Because I didn't know if the separations were supposed to be on opaque white backgrounds or transparent backgrounds. Such information could have been imparted in the specs, if the specs existed.

After he got that image with the blank black top layer, he sent me an email. Excerpt:

this one you last sent me a link to... opened as a blank page

Did you try opening it in Photoshop, idiot? Photoshop seems to be the artists' standard [at least among the artists I know]. Did you take even one goddamn second to look at the layers pane and see that there was more than one layer?

I decided that I'm going to look into incorporating myself. The next time R.L. asks me to clean up her design disasters, I'll tell her that I cost $40 per hour or for any part thereof (it's a low enough number that it just might work) and then send her an invoice when I'm done. Or maybe I should tell her to shove it and get myself fired. Honestly, that's a really tempting option right now.