It's midsummer here in New England, just the right time for a light-hearted column. Ready for some all-time "Best Excuses by Printers?" A month ago, I asked subscribers the following question:

What was the most creative excuse you ever used (as a printer) or heard (as a print customer) when a job went wrong?

First, let me thank all of you who responded. Although some of the responses were serious, most were humorous. Printers can be exquisitely "creative" it seems.

Several printers wrote to say that they never use lame excuses, that they prefer to contact customers immediately and explain what went wrong and why, and focus on how they're going to fix the problem. One saleswoman said that she "throws herself at her customer's mercy and apologizes profusely, since "customers can usually see right through a salesperson in a heartbeat." As she's investigating the problem, she sends corny gifts, complete with a "sorry-I-screwed-up" card (would've worked for me!).

One printer noted that "anyone who'd be so stupid as to lie to a customer cannot be very bright."

Some printers said that if jobs are running late, they can always blame it on a bad file or a bad drive.

A marketing professional lost a client (decidedly unfunny) when a printer he hired shorted his client's print run. The printer's excuse? "We're allowed to short you by 10% and still bill you for the full amount. You should have ordered 10% more if you needed an exact amount."

I did receive some mighty funny excuses, though. Here are my favorites:

- "We service the Washington, D.C., area, with customers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. If we're late with a Virginia job, we might say quite apologetically that the job's on the Maryland truck. We'd insert any of the other cities accordingly as needed. By the way, we only have one truck."

- "I'm sorry. The dog ate my brain."

- "About 10 years ago, a printer quoted on a job and made a notation on the quote that the prices would be honored unless war broke out in the Middle East. This happened during the Gulf War. . .but I wasn't sure what that had to do with my print job."

- "We ordered a folder with remoistenable glue. The job was to deliver flat, get imprinted, then get folded and mailed. The client would moisten the glue to seal the reply form. But the printer had trouble with his glue heads. He applied three to five times more glue than necessary. When the flats were stacked and shrink-wrapped, the excess glue caused uneven stacks. Plus the heat generated by shrink-wrapping caused the glue to activate, and pieces stuck together. The mailing house had to separate them by hand to imprint them. When they were then fed through the imprinter, THAT heat caused the glue to activate again, and pieces stuck together. By the time the client got the job delivered, the glue wasn't usable. The client 'could lick glue from now till Sunday' and it wouldn't work. The printer's excuse: the mail house must have stored the folders in too warm a warehouse!"

- "Sorry your job is late. The delivery man was coming back from the plant. . .they're rebuilding the RR crossing in town and he got lost."

- "On this year's printing of the annual report, everything was rush, rush, rush (as usual). The paper finally arrived. Alas and alack, the paper was too cold to run. None of us (the printer, pressman, or me) could believe it. So we went out to the press and were feeling the paper. Lo and behold, it was pretty darn cold. None of us had ever experienced this, and it was the thing that put us over the edge. . .we couldn't stop laughing."

- "We had a sheet printed on both sides. It was a list of famous quotes with errors purposely inserted to make them funny. When I called to find out why the job was overdue, I was told the following: 'The proofreader saw a copy and said it had to be redone because of the many spelling errors. So we ran it through a spell checker and redid it. But spell checker didn't catch everything, so we had to redo it a THIRD time. We should be done within the hour.' Of course, now it was totally wrong. Luckily, they hadn't yet dumped the trash container from the first printing and were able to pull out the boxes we needed. The mailing went out on time."

- "A customer came to us with a brochure, which was over six weeks late at another print shop. Disgusted with the other printer, the customer pulled the job and gave it to us. Why the delay at the other shop, I asked? The customer was told the printer had printed it weeks ago, but had sent it out for 'special embossing,' and the outside vendor held it up. I reviewed the job specs and saw that the 'special embossing' wasn't embossing at all - but a special S.D. Warren stock that's 'embossed' as the paper is made."

SURVEY WINNERS!!
Choosing a winner was too difficult (or is that 'two' difficult?). Here they are:

The Easy Open Fold
- "We once did a brochure and folded it in house on our little friction feed folder instead of sending it out to the bindery. When done, the fold on the edge hung over about 1/8th of an inch. When the client complained, we told her it was called an 'easy open fold' and that we'd have to make a special request on future orders NOT to use this type of fold. She became a regular client for years. . .and every time we printed her brochures, she reminded us to tell the bindery that she didn't want that easy open fold!"

The Fed Ex Plane Crash
- "A financial services customer desperately needed his statements. I forgot to order them on time and placed the order a week and a half later. But the manufacturer could ship them in just three days. As it happened, a Federal Express plane had crashed the day before, making all the papers. I told the customer to look at the picture in the Washington Post, and if he looked closely near the wheels, he'd see his name on the box of statements that were on the plane. But not to worry: I'd talked to the manufacturer, who could rush his order out in three days. He got his statements, I looked like a hero. . .and he still has that picture of the plane crash hanging in his office!"

Winners (and you know who you are!), expect an email from me this week with details about your prize.

Thank you all for your contributions. Feel free to forward this column to your printer and buyer friends. And look for another Print Tips survey next month!

P.S. Can paper REALLY be too cold to run through a press??