Hit a thousand business cards printed in a single shift last Tuesday and still can't believe it

I work at a small print shop in downtown Columbus and last week we had a rush order for a local real estate group. They wanted 500 double-sided cards on that thick 16pt stock with rounded corners. I set up the old trusty Xerox and just kept loading trays and pulling stacks. Somewhere around hour 4 I realized I had hit exactly 1,000 cards in a single 8-hour shift. That number surprised me because my personal best before was maybe 600. It made me wonder if I was just in a good groove or if there is something to changing up your workflow for big runs. Does anyone else track their print numbers for personal satisfaction or is that just me? And if you do, what milestone felt bigger than you expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan5113d ago

My buddy down in Cincinnati works at a bigger print operation and he told me once he hit 1,500 business cards in a shift for a real estate chain. Said it was pure chaos - the machine kept jamming on the rounded corner feeder and he had to babysit it the whole time. He ended up skipping lunch just to keep pace and got a weird second wind around hour 6. He still brags about it whenever we grab beers, but he admitted the last 200 cards were mostly him just staring at the paper stack willing it to finish. That milestone made him realize his normal workflow had a lot of wasted time he never noticed before. Did you notice any specific part of your process that clicked different that day?

patricia_wright12d ago

Oh man, that second wind thing is real, I saw a study once that said our brains can actually push through fatigue better when we're in a tight deadline spot. @evan51, I bet your buddy was so dialed in that day he didn't even realize his muscle memory was doing half the setup work for him.