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This story is somewhat old, but my friend works for a medical company that fact checks instruction manuals. She found an error in a manual for a client, so she informed the graphic design company that works for the client. One line of text needed to be changed in 1 manual with 40 different languages. They literally needed to copy and paste the text. The client was paying the graphic design company extra to drop what they're doing and work on this project IMMEDIATELY.

How long should that take?

3 weeks went by. The company was 2 weeks past the deadline and she got fed up with it and wanted to do it herself, but didn't have the program. I have the program to update edit the manual. So she went to her company and said I could do it in 2 hours at the most.

Her company came back to me and asked if I had 3 forms of insurance. Two forms of insurance were to make sure that I didn't leak the manual. The last form of insurance was Business Auto Insurance... yet I didn't even have to drive to do this job.

Her company nor their client wouldn't allow me to work on the manual without the insurance. Even if I drove my laptop to their company, worked on the file, delete the file, took it out of the recycling bin and format the drive, they wouldn't let me.

My friend told the graphic design company that they had the permission of the client to replace the graphic design company. Meraculously all 40 were done right then and there.

How much did they charge to copy and paste text 40 times? $32,000 ($800 per language).

WTF? I could have bought the million dollar insurance for that much! My friend even explained to the client they were being robbed. I'd hate to see what they charged to design the real document for. You know what this graphic design company that has all of this money will probably go bankrupt and wonder why.

Related story: In Chicago, the city spent like $30,000 to make one form. WTF?