This guy is very detail oriented.
Coincidentally, he doesn't work at our print house.

I am still at work. I say still, but I haven't really been in the office all day. Rather, I've been at the printers showing them how to do their jobs.

When I took my first issue to print two months ago, I thought it was odd that The Publisher didn't provide the printers with a printed mock-up of what the magazine is supposed to look like; the order, the proper coloring, etc... This would save me a lot of time and trouble as the printers could check these things and make sure they're correct before I get there for press check. The Publisher says the printers are good though; that they don't need one. I didn't want to be the new guy who comes in and interferes with old policies though. Well, not the first month, at least.

That said, today was press check. Press check usually takes no more than an hour or two, but today was a totally different story. More than half of the pages were out of order. For instance, one of our spreads printed out as a right page and the following left page. Also, our type was printing out as four-color black even though we used one-color black, and one page was actually--I kid you not--upside down.

To be fair to the printers, this situation could have easily been avoided if they had a mock-up to reference. On the other hand, an upside down page? A spread that begins on the right page? Come on.

I got back to the office at 6:00 tonight, knowing that I'd have to stay late to dig through the new stack of freelancers' articles (this is very painful) and get something to The Silent Designer so that he'll have material to work with tomorrow. Him and I have somewhat of a system of checks and balances: If he's not busy, I'm not doing my job. As I was sifting through them, I found the following card addressed to me:

Could it be? Was this what I thought it was? I opened it:

Why, yes it was. The Reebok gym, the gym that played host to my discovery of The JAP Workout™, wants me back for a week! Clearly they can sense a good potential member when they see one. The way I wound my towel up and slapped my friend in the ass. The way I went outside to run on the track but went the wrong way. The way I couldn't figure out how to open the door to get back in (push, not pull, damnit). I am basically the definition of quality.

So, am I in? Of course I am. If spending only one day at this magical place could elicit such a groundbreaking epiphany, there's no telling what a whole week might do.

No bad day could offset this kind of news. I'll let you know how it goes.