----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Tainter"
Subject: Re: Another one bites the dust.
Ah...they should have treated you better, given you an incentive to stay.
Tripling my wage, and make every customer pass an intelligence test before
they get to talk to me would have gone a long way.
Really, the lab industry has been in decline for a very long time. It used
to be staffed by photographers looking to suplement their incomes, and
derive the benefit of doing their own work on someone elses nickel.
It's how I got into it.
Now it is staffed by people who weren't fast enough to be cashiers. None of
my co-workers are looking at the industry as a long term employment
opportunity, with the consequence that they are not interested in learning
all that they need to know to excell at it.
I'm not even sure at this point if the industry is really viable in the long
haul.
Digital imaging has done a few things to the industry, none of them
positive.
It has put a lot of the quality control squarely in the lap of the customer,
who doesn't want the responsibility, and it has taken a lot of the quality
control potential away from the lab.
Interestingly, digital printing has been, in many ways, a boon to film
printing, since now we can control things that we could not control before
without an enlarger and some serious work.
Unfortunately, film use is in freefall, so the customer is not seeing the
potential benefits, they have switched to digital capture.
Anyway, it's late and I have a belly full of whisky.
William Robb
