Wish I Was a Bastard

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 | Uncategorized

My sister has always tried to convince herself that her real father was actually the postman, or the garbage man, or just some random sloppy joe from the corner pub…. Alas, it is not true….. We both know our real father, we avoided him when we were kids, and we avoid him now that we are adults.

Well he decided to move into a house. He has been living in a nice apartment for a long time bitching about how much it costs to buy a house and how he doesn’t have room for all his stuff where he is at.

Whenever I see him I hear phrases like “I’m so busy”, “It’s such a mess here”, “I took thousands of hours of computer training”, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok”. Ok perhaps I don’t hear that last one, but the point is what he says is bullshit. I suppose you could say he is busy perfectly stacking catalogs in exact spaced piles and vacuuming the floor, but if you called that busy how can he say he is busy?

Thousands of hours of computer training my ass, I mean back when he had a job they made him do some training on the computers there, but they were all custom made shell programs that knowledge of seems to serve no purpose outside of that office.

So with all his “computer training” (he still can’t manage to figure out how to check his own email unless he reads it off of a step by step tutorial on a piece of scra paper) he decided to help me out and hire me to “help” him make a postcard.

So he calls me and plays the funny guy pretending to be just some random customer of mine… I mean I think even with a voice disguiser and use of somebody elses phone I would still recognize it as him, but whatever…. He says he wants to hire Computer Jack-of-all-Trades to design a Christmas / Change of Address Postcard.

Fine, I know he is just doing this because he feels bad that I do not have a job right now. He cannot understand the fact that it is by choice…. but whatever, if he wants to give me some money, then fine.

So he tells me exactly what he wants, 3 goofy phrases, one in the top left, one in the center, and one in the lower right corner of the postcard, and his address on the back. That’s it, no pictures no nothing.

Now first off if he was hiring me to design a card I figured I needed to design SOMETHING, so I suggested to get rid of the stupid phrases and let me just make him something nice, well that didn’t fly and then he told me the exact color he wanted the text to be described how he would like the fonts to look.

Well seeming like a complete waste of my time I tell him that I at least need to get a picture of his new house to put on the postcards. He then asks me to make him a printout of all the font choices he had so he could choose which ones to use.

THAT IS NOT DESIGN, well fuck him, I designed a card and told him to like it. So he did. I kept the premise of what he wanted anyways. (you can see them here: http://www.lyngaas.net/temp/)

At any rate I charged him $30 for the design, but I was not going to print them, I am low on ink and the crazy fucker said he needed 50!!!! He doesn’t have 50 friends! He has 1, and that one also doubles as his brother). After you get a couple other relatives who already know his address I count 5. I checked with him to make sure he didn’t misplace that 0 on 50 and then told him I had to take it to Kinko’s.

So I get there and tell them I need 50 double sided 4×6 color postcards, to which they tell me it will be $100 PLUS I would need to print them myself and cut them out. Knowing there was no way in hell that would happen I left and drove to office depot. I called my father and told him that I was going to buy him some cardstock and an extra color Ink cartridge for his very nice printer and that he could just print and cut them himself. Doing that would cost him less than $10.

He tells me
“no, I just don’t have time for that. Unless you want to do that and cut them out and I will pay you for it?”
“Ah, NO I am not going to do that…”
“Fine, then just go to Kinko’s”.
“Are you serious? That is WAY to much for these postcards, If I were you I would cut my losses now and buy 50 postcards for #2.50 at the dollar store”
“I won’t be doing this often, it is just something to do every great now and then”
“Ok…. but I seriously think you are nuts”
“Well, I won’t be doing this very often so it’s ok”
“Fine, bye”
“Wait, are you going to deliver them today?”
“I suppose but I am going to charge you for gas”
“That’s ok, when will you be by?”
“When I can…. gotta go, bye”
“Bye”

Well I still thought that price was insane, so I called around. I talked to some friends who have hookups at printing press’ etc… Well after a bunch of time looking I found that Staples would actually do it cheaper than a printing press.

So I went over there, the girl there told me that she was really busy and couldn’t get them done today…. So I started flirting with her until she changed her tune to “Well most of these projects don’t have any real priority”. She then told me she could put 4 on the page and that it would only be $35 + tax for the whole project. Great, do it.

Well I go to visit a friend and in less than half an hour I get a call from the Staples girl telling me she is done!!!! :) So I go there and she kind of forgot to remove the white bleed (white border) around the postcard that I had put in. Since I had told her to do that while I was still there she gave me another discount and with tax it now cost only $31.67.

I had to go to Fort today anyways to fix a computer for somebody, but while I was there I was debating whether to charge him what he said he would pay for it, or whether to tell him all the work I did to get it for him cheaper.

I was not sure of the answer so I used a lifeline and after some consultation decided for being such a lazy sob that he should have to pay for the whole thing.

So when I see him I still give him a story of getting a discount on the project since they screwed it up and put the left the white borders in. So in total he gave me $30 for creating the card, $5 for gas, $95 for how much I said Kinko’s was and another $5 for shmoozing them into a discount.
Now some of you will probably think I am a lying fuck (I haven’t had one of those in awhile) and a thief, but you are entitled to your own opinion (at least until I win God in the next election).

Still being his only child who still talks to him, I think I should have charged him even more. Like perhaps a minimum $60 delivery charge or something.

I’d bitch more, but you have already been so tolerant to read all the way to the bottom of this post, so here are some courtesy breasts instead:

               

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