You should know

[h1ghstrung]

I work for a small print shop. We specialize in wide format printing like blueprints. We received a print request from a customer that we had never heard from before. The customer wanted us to print their files in color in "whatever size they had last time." Again, we had never dealt with this customer before. We informed the customer that we did not have a record of what they had printed previously but we were happy to help and suggested an appropriate size for their job.

The customer took a picture of their plans last set of plans they had printed. Many companies place a binding strip on the left side of large plans to protect the pages as well as to have their company label visible. We informed the customer that we had not printed that set of the plans (it was one of our previous competitors) but we could still help them.

The customer snidely remarked that we "should know" what size those were. Ultimately, we were able to print a set a plans the customer was satisfied with. But the statement that we ought to know what our competitors did for the customer stuck with me.