| WHO WANTS TO HAVE MY ARTWORKER JOB? | ||
| Hi - My name is Jean Pierre (JP for short) and
I'm the MAC/PC Pre-Press guy at Catford Print Centre. I'm nearly 40 and I'm in the middle of a mid-life crisis. The trouble is I love my job - but I love my girl friend more. She is from France you see and after over a year of living together in Beckenham we've decided to bugger off to the South of France to live. |
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So it's bye bye to the rain and the cold of England and hello to wall to wall sunshine on the Med. for the rest of our lives. It has become my responsibility to try to persuade you to take over from me and I've been told to say what I want - so I will. I've been at Catford Print Centre for over 5 years and during that time I hope that I have become a valued, respected and responsible member of the team. I knew quite a lot before I joined here but was suprised by how much more I learned in just a few short weeks. Sometimes it can be frustrating but other times its been great fun. Sometimes I tear my hair out but most days I go home feeling satisfied for a job well done. The type of customers we have are not blue-chip famous named corporates, but rather small businesses, independent designers, societies and the like and they are spread out all over the country. Most of the work we print are either booklets, paper back books or leaflets and these can be either black & white or full colour. We operate a PDF workflow and we encourage customers to create their own PDF's but needless to say we still get our fair share of Quark, InDesign,Word and Publisher Documents which I have to convert to PDF before going to print. Most of the PDF's we get from clients usually need some form of correction (RGB to CMYK, black overprint etc.) and then I impose them ready for print. We have both offset litho and digital printing machines and at the present moment the amount of litho jobs outweigh digital ones by about 2:1 but digital is closing the gap all the time. For litho jobs I have to output plates to CTP but as we run polyester plates (yes - even for 4 colour) this is very simple indeed. I output to both colour, mono and wide format digital machines and although most of the time someone else actually monitors the machine and keeps it fed with paper I need to be able to carry out this task as well when necessary. I also talk directly with the customers a lot on the phone giving them advice or handling technical queries. Although I am no graphic designer, I do have to carry out simple layouts for business cards, stationery, flyers etc. and I use QuarkXpress to do the ground work before converting to a PDF for printing. The software application jobs we get from clients include InDesign, Corel Draw (ugh!!!), Word, Publisher, PageMaker etc. and whilst I am no expert in these I need to be able to open the document and create a PDF. Of course I also use PhotoShop most days and Illustrator a bit from time to time. My main use however is Acrobat along with several plug ins - Pitstop, Crackerjack (to control dot gain), Quite a Box of Tricks, Quite Imposing and Quite Revealing. My favourite machine is my old MAC running OS9 but most clients send in PC work and from time to time OSX and I tend to use these machines to most of the time, reverting back to my old MAC for designing. We work Monday - Friday and in all we do 38 hours per week. We keep "office hours" but I'm afraid that when it is necessary you will have to stay late at the drop of a hat - although you can choose to take this as overtime or flexi time. Holidays are 20 days p.a. rising by 1 day for each year of completed service up to a maximum of 25 days p.a. You will have to take 3 of these days in between Christmas and New Year but I always liked doing that anyway. Bank holidays etc. are of course extra. You need to make sure that you don't want time off when other members of the office team are off which is a bit of a pain but it's a small team here and if 2 of us are away at the same time it can get too much during busy times. Oh and by the way don't be off sick - most of the staff here have been here between 10-20 years and most of them have never had a day ill - perhaps its because we get an annual bonus if we don't have time off sick. I work in the same room as the manager and another member of the pre press team (Kim) and we have to act as an over spill for the phones and reception if there is nobody else to take the calls. Catford Print Centre is very close to Bellingham railway station (Blackfriars to Sevenoaks line) and also as it is on the A21 several bus routes go right by the door. There is also room on-site to park your car which is a bonus these days. If you want to make sure I actually mean what I have said then feel free to give me a ring. BUT, please don't phone and try to speak to the manager to arrange an interview, if you are interested in taking over my job you will have to send him your CV first to:
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I'm leaving for France early/mid May so maybe I'll see you
before I go.
JP |
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