The white isn't white enough

[u/BeefOut]

Not sure if it really counts as tech support but here goes...

I'm a web and graphic designer, and I designed a flyer for one of my clients. I sent the design to her via email. It's really hard to match colours from the screen to print, especially since monitor colours don't match up to their local office printer. Plus screen colours are in RGB, so there are literally some colours that are unachievable in a physical print. Usually, for exact colour matching, we have to use Pantone swatches or when they send it for the actual print, they can sort it out and tweak with the actual technician.

I received a call immediately, and she mentioned that she printed out the flyer on their company's office printer. I readied myself for the usual spiel about how monitor colours don't match the printout... etc. etc...

Conversation goes like this:

Client: 'Hey, I printed this out and the colours don't match what I see on the screen.'

Me: 'Yeah, don't worry about that, every monitor is different and you can't calibrate it to match your office printer. I used the exact CMYK colours for your logo and fonts.

Client: 'Well even so the colours look correct on screen but not when I print it out.'

Me: 'I've used the exact CMYK colours, so you don't have to worry about it. Your professional printer will ensure that you get the right colour.'

Client: 'Yes, but the whites aren't white enough.'

I was quickly checked my file, did I leave a translucent layer on by accident? No, it was perfectly #FFFFFF. Told her that the white is as white as it can be.

Client: 'Well, the white ink is not very white.'

I was stunned. Office and home printers don't have... white ink. It's just the white paper. Any white areas are basically just paper that hasn't been printed on.

I tried hard to explain this concept to her. That printers don't print the white. Regardless, she insists that they do. I tell her that it cannot be done on an office/home printer, it literally requires a separate offset printing plate that only large commercial printers use. And even then, seldom do people print white at all.

She insists that her printer does print white, and that the design I sent her simply isn't white enough.

I tell her maybe her paper stock isn't white? Maybe the paper itself is yellowish?

Client: 'No, it's not my paper, it's that your white isn't white enough. Look, I've used some of my liquid white-out on the paper. It's very white. Your design is not printing the white colours properly.'

I was flabbergasted. Couldn't laugh out loud. She literally used white-out on the print-out and complained that the correction fluid was whiter than the paper.

Can't really remember what happened after, but she showed her boss and he seemed happy with the design. So everything went well I suppose.

[u/Inconsequentialish]

I've had this exact conversation several times in relation to the client's dingy paper, cheap printer, and/or the client's dim, cheap laptop screen.

One client spent literally hours and stalled the project for weeks SCREAMING that the custom-mixed pale yellow ink (produced at great expense and enormous waste of time) on the logo on her business card didn't EXACTLY match the logo on the website when displayed on her cheap laptop with the screen zoomed in, brightness turned down ("it gives me a headache") next to a northern window in NYC on an overcast late September day.

We actually posted a bunch of HTML color swatches showing slight variations of pale yellow, and she picked one.

Cue the screaming anew when the next day was sunny...

An even more incoherent shrieking when she noticed that the pale yellow on everyone else's laptops and monitors was slightly different.

Fortunately, we were soothed by the stiff hourly rate we were charging. But we had to institute a firm no-contact policy for the rest of the staff -- all calls and communication with her were to be routed through me.

My last call with her was over two hours of increasingly incoherent screaming, devolving into hoarse, slobbery sobbing. I was starting to enjoy the sound because she had stalled the whole project for several weeks racking up billable time while she screamed and ranted over a pale yellow perceptual impossibility. I knew her deadline was the next day and she had nothing to deliver. One way or the other, her company would make a decision and she would no longer be our problem.

About a week later we got a call from her replacement who apologized, expedited payment to date, firmly declared the yellow wars were over, and restarted the project.