Shut up!

That is what I would like to tell the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. We publish their course packets, and let me tell you, a bunch of bigger prima donnas you've never encountered. They require proofs on everything we do for them (except of course for their exams, which always have a two-day turnaround--this includes one day for shipping). Their books often have a lot of details graphics in grayscale, which means that some printers will not have enough shades of gray to accurately depict the graphics. Before this year, when we did our own printing, we simply printed them on a higher-quality printer. Apparently, Kinko's doesn't have any of those, because invariably, the proofs are too light. I'm up to proof number three on a neuroscience book right now. However, our inhouse printer prints in high quality, so the file copy that I check for quality looks great. The PDF that we upload to the Kinko's server looks great. But the copy they produce does not. So, when the College of Medicine faculty keep telling us to "check against last year," I want to tell them to perform some neuroscience on their own brains. I would be more than willing to drive out with our file copy and let them check that, because I guarantee they'll love it. But the Kinko's product looks like crap. Argh, argh, argh. It's as if all the quality control that I spend my days agonizing over is completely meaningless.