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Cootie Girl: field trip (part I)
5.2.2005
I have worked in the publishing industry for over the past 11 years and I have never been to a printing plant. That is of course until April 5th when I got to go on a trip with my boss (Rich), a sales rep (Gerry) from my company and 3 of our clients (one who also happens to be my good friend Tisha) to one of our printing plants down in Dyersburg Tennessee. I also need to mention that one of our other clients, Duncan, who is Tisha's boss use to be my boss about 9 years ago and the third client is Dana who works in the Northampton office and happens to be pregnant. It is because of Duncan that I got to go on this trip since he asked my company to bring me along. And it is also at Duncan's request that we spend the night in Memphis and NOT Dyersburg - which if you have ever been to Dyersburg you would know the name pretty much sums up the town. OK to be fair I didn't spend any time in the town of Dyersburg but I heard enough stories on the drive there to know it's kind of dull.
Our flight was at 6:50 in the am and Tisha and I got to the airport at like 5am just because we had a horrible experience going to Vegas we wanted to be sure we had time to relax before the flight. (NOTE: if you have a flight earlier than 7am you can get there at 6am and still have plenty of time.) The flight was nice since I got to sleep a little and when we landed Duncan picked this big orange Aztec car since Dyersburg is about 2 hours from Memphis. Rich and Gerry were in the lead car which might have been a mistake as we missed a turn and detoured to Arkansas but all was fine once we crossed the Mississippi again and got back on the right road. The car ride over was filled with many stories of back in the day antics and some company insider info which since I was the only one in the car not a Disney employee I found very interesting. I was enjoying the scenery as this is my first time in Tennessee but found it very mundane and kind of like every town USA. We get to the plant and notice a big nail sticking out of one of our tires. The people at the plant were all over it and got it changed at the local auto shop while the rest of us enjoyed a lunch followed by a presentation and a tour of the plant.
I just want to say the tour of the plant was just AWESOME. I mean to really actually see what goes on after you transmit the files to the plant is totally amazing to me. The files are put through several processes including inspection, plating, printing with color tuning and finally to the bindery. We watched the offset printers spin some Forbes magazine pages and got an up close look at how the color is managed while the pages are printing. We got to see a gravure printer however they had nothing printing on it at the time we were there. The gravure was a little impressive as it is printed from these giant copper drums that have the pages etched into them. We don't use those printers for the magazines we work on because they are not as flexible with smaller runs, regionals and copy splits. We got to drive around the plant in one of these little cars that hold 8 which was fun until we got to the bindery and saw that we had a flat. The whole time there I wanted to re-enact that seen from Austin Powers where the guy is yelling at the very slow steam roller to stop because that is what the halls look like there and they had a few fork lifts running on their own. We got to see the latest issue of Family Fun in the bindery and it was just like the Lavern and Shirley opener except instead of bottles it was magazines going through the machine. I decided that I wanted to work on the bindery. Each magazine was predetermined for each customer so say your subscription was up they bindery would know to put a cover wrap on your issue. Same with regional editions getting the correct sections for that region and if any magazine fails it gets tossed and that subscribers issue goes back in the queue. The finished issues are laser tagged with addresses and bundled in packs of 10 for the specific zip code. Not sure why but this totally fascinated me and the fact that I would be able to wear headphones all day and not really deal with anyone made me think this was the job for me. I changed my mind when I realized that I would have to live in Dyersburg to do it.
We got back to Memphis around 5pm and checked into the Peabody Hotel just in time for the march of the ducks. No joke this hotel has 5 ducks that get the royal treatment. They stay in the penthouse at night but from 11am - 5pm they are in the fountain in the lobby of the hotel. They have them walk the red carpet in and out of the fountain and up the elevator back to their room. Kind of odd but this tradition gets a lot of tourist to crowd in the hotels lobby for at least an hour a day. After we checked in we schedule to meet back in the lobby at 5:30 to get some drinks before dinner.
(I'll have to tell you the rest tomorrow because I know this part was long and boring - part two will be better as it has drinking goats - seriously)
to be continued .....
