Labeling my products has always been the one thing that I find most frustrating on a regular basis. I’ve screamed, cried, yelled, cussed, thrown things – you name it, labeling has brought it out in me. People tell me, “well if you’d just stop being so creative and making so much stuff you wouldn’t have this problem”, no can do.
We’ve had the same laser printer for a number of years now. It’s faithfully performed alongside my rants; it’s not the problem, my lack of knowledge of graphic arts is the real culprit. Well, that was true until three weeks ago. The toner window showed “toner low” for awhile before morphing into “toner out”. I remember this from a few years ago and what a difficult time we had deciding whether or not to buy a new laser printer or the four toner cartridges costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 – we opted for the cartridges and went on our merry way without incident.
So, the “toner out” indicator is on again and the printer will not budge, or, a, print…anything. This time I have two partners to confer with regarding what decision should be made. We decided, again to replace the toner, this time at $700 for the lot of them. I tried real hard not to think about this too much. It was a few days before our big opening and we were way behind with our label printing.
And now, you guessed it. The reliable laser printer with the $700 worth of new cartridges has given up the ghost. Well, not exactly it needs new parts and shows signs of wear, or more accurately shows signs of not being used enough..always something. So, we called in the folks at Athens Digital Systems and this is where it got real interesting.
It turns out that at the very least the printer needs a part that will cost us around $300 to $350 installed. (You understand that it’s holiday shopping time for my customers and I don’t have time for this…). It turns out that there are also some other issues to consider when determining whether to repair or replace the machine. I was in no mood to deal with more expensive decisions regarding our laser sweetie. Our technician, Jerome, suggested that I might want to talk to the sales manager in the next few days. In my head I’m saying “I don’t have any next few days”.
What happened next was amazing, wonderful, unexpected, generous, kind and compassionate. I asked Brandon Hogan if he had a rental that we could use to get us through the holiday season and to buy some time in order to make a wise decision. I was fully prepared to pay in order to have a quick fix to my production-stopping dilemma. He very graciously said, “I have a new machine that you can use until we can meet in January”. I asked what the monthly charge would be, to which he replied, “there’s no charge, you can use it until we meet and determine what you want to do”. I had spoken to his Dad the day before in detail about our printer and received much the same kindness, respect and consideration. Their technician Jerome had only good things to say about working for the Hogan family.
So, here I sit taking the time to blog, while other chores wait, because its important to me to give credit where credit is due.
In a world where things move too fast much of the time and we business folks can easily forget to be compassionate, I have to say it was a welcome and refreshing experience to be treated with such dignity; this is how successful businesses grow. Thank you Athens Digital Systems!
What we don't see 