Blue Makes Me See Red

Its not often I get a call at work that makes me laugh and want to cry at the same time. We supply stamps to a local office supply business in town. For the most part they are simple stamps. They order, we make, they pick up done. The past couple weeks we have been dealing with one of their sales people about one stamp.

They have a customer who is very picky and particular. They wanted their stamp to look and what color they wanted the stamp. Normally, we don't send proofs on how a stamp will look. For this stamp we had to send two different proofs. Finally, they approved the stamp design. Next it was time to work on a color. Keep in mind, this is a return address stamp. Pure and simple. Not something that is going on the top of their invoices as a brand.

Blue was the color they wanted. Navy blue to be precise. For the time of stamp we were going to make them, there was only one option. A simple blue. One more fax was requested and sent. Upon my customer receiving the fax she sent me an email. "Bernie, I thought you were going to fax this over in blue. That way I could show my customer your blue ink. I read that email and spit my diet coke all over my screen. Who has a fax machine that faxes in color? Even if someone did, it wouldn't show a true color of my stamp ink!

I called my customer and explained that she was asking the impossible. She laughed and told me that it had been a long week. I offered to stamp a stamp with blue ink on paper so her customer could see the color. I stamped two different stamps with blue ink. Stamping quickly for a light color, stamping normally and finally holding it down hard for a dark color. On the top of the paper, I clearly wrote, "All of these samples are the SAME blue ink. Just different pressures on the stamp. There is NO difference in the ink colors." I had a runner pick it up to deliver it. I thought that was the end of it.

The next day she sent me an email that said, "She liked the color of the stamp on the bottom left." I slammed my head against my keyboard and replied, "Oh, good. We will use that one."