Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Why 20 year olds wonder why they can't get a job

I made a trip to Office Max to have a couple of photos made from picture files on my thumb drive.
Here is the conversation I had with the 20 year old girl at the counter.

"Hi, can you help me print some photos?"
(she mumbles something to me at 400 words per second)
"what?"
"Come over here by this computer."
She loaded up the files from my thumb drive and we selected the first which is a circuit board layout that has only 3 colors, red, green, and yellow.
"Can you give me the prices for like, an 8x10 and 11x14?"
"which one?"
"oh, well, the 11x14 then."
"Ninety cents."
"Wow, that's cheap, what kind of paper is that on"
"Regular paper"
"How much does it cost on photo paper?"
"Which size?"
"Umm, the 11x14."
"Well, you have to then buy the paper extra."
"So how much?"
"A dollar twenty nine."
"Ok, give me one of those."
"11 by 14 on photo paper?"
"yes"
"Is the file sized for 11x14?"
"Well, I don't know, I only know it in pixels, but it should scale I think."
(she opens the file and looks at the size)
"It is 27 by 15"
"So can you resize it?"
"I can't print it on an 11x14."
"What size can you print it on?"
"11 by 17"
"Ok, that's fine"
(she yells to the back) JOHNNY, LOAD UP SOME THREE THREE SEVEN NINE FOUR PAPER IN PRINTER A FOUR!!!
(she then goes through about 10 dialog boxes setting everything up, then heads to the back to get it)
She returns and immediately I see an problem; the colors are cyan, magenta and yellow instead of red, green, and yellow.

"Hmm, it looks like the file did not convert correctly, the colors are opposite."

Now, I happen to have knowledge of how colors work because I work in image processing for a living, and it is clear that something screwed up and the printer used the wrong color setup.

"What do you mean?" she says with a blank stare
"Well, instead of using RGB space, the printer used Cyan Magenta Yellow space."
"Oh, well those are the only colors on this printer."
She meant that there are only three ink cartridges and they are cyan magenta and yellow.
Of course any color can be made from these three colors.

I paid the girl and walked out.

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