There are siome things you can't unsee, like pictures people bring to have printed or developed. No shame, no game I guess.
CampbellArmada asked people that work in photograph centers: What's the worst picture you've ever seen someone print out in public?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
10. You were warned.
Had to help this woman set up her iPhone on our photo kiosk one day. I could not be more clear with her when I said. "If you plug in your iPhone, every photo in your camera roll will show up on this screen. They won't be saved but EVERY SINGLE PHOTO will show up." She assured me that that is okay. So I set it up for her, and what do you know? A bunch of pictures of her in her underwear in her dirty bathroom.
I told her if she needed any more help to let me know but she just ended up leaving, and she stole the Apple wire for the kiosk.
9. Why have pics of anything else?
I stood behind a guy at Walmart the other day.
When he plugged his phone into the kiosk I saw so many peen pics I wish I could un-see. But then I became fascinated, because he was just casually selecting the, I don't know, 5% of pics that weren't dick pics from between them. Either not realizing or not caring that I could see everything he was doing.
*Update: since it seems at least a few of you seem to care - it was like a rainbow of dicks up there on the screen so I doubt they were all his, unless he's some form of transformer.
8. Boys and their toys.
My older sister got a camera when she was little for her birthday. I proceeded to use a whole roll of film to detail my balls because I thought I was hilarious AF.
To whatever dude out there who stared at 25 pictures of balls, my bad bro.
Lol, when I was a kid I was playing truth or dare at a friend's house and she dared me to wear something from her mother's closet. I agreed, but then as part of the joke, my friend brought out her mom's sexy lingerie. Not one to back down from a dare, I changed into it.
I'm not sure if we planned it in advance, but she decided it would be funny to do a photoshoot, so I did my best attempt at adult poses while she finished off a roll of film in her parents' camera. We didn't really think anything of it.
.....Until her parents had the photos developed.
I don't think he actually got in trouble for it, but her dad definitely had some questions to answer when he picked up his photos from the lab.
7. A weed garden, you say?
I used to work in a photo studio that developed film and had a little do it yourself kiosk where you could print pictures you didn't want me to look at. For the most part, I don't think people realized that if you drop your film off to be developed, the person doing it is going to look through each and every photo to correct things like red eye, contrast, brightness, and skip printing any images that are black or obviously a mistake. So, I had three instances of customers coming in with things I wish they hadn't.
First, a police arson inspector came in needing to print the photos he took of one of his cases. He wanted to watch as I processed everything but since it was on actual film he couldn't do it at the kiosk. There were images of dead, burned bodies on there. It was very disgusting. He kept apologizing for making me look at them but kept repeating he didn't have any other way to print the images.
Second, lots and lots of images of marijuana plants and other drugs. The marijuana looked like the guy who brought the film in was trying to sell the plants, there were a bunch in the images, standing against things to try and show size comparison.
Finally, a repeat customer who at least once a week came in to get dirty pictures of his wife/girlfriend printed. After the first few surprise developments my boss had to post a sign saying that all sexual images had to be done on the kiosk and not by the employees. That didn't seem to matter to this guy because as soon as he got the images loaded onto the kiosk he would call me over, or whoever was working that day, and ask for help editing them. He wanted to know what I thought of the poses, the costumes, the lighting, every single aspect had to be gone over and critiqued by me for taste and style. I was super uncomfortable but it had been drilled into me in training that I couldn't refuse if a customer asked for help on the kiosk so I just went along with it and tried not to look at the images. Eventually I left that job and a few years later it closed down but I heard from my former coworker that the guy came in every week till the very end to get his smutty photos printed out.
6. Probably good that you called the cops.
Former Walmart employee highlights:
Had a woman tell me not to look at her photos because last time someone saw them they threw them out. (We weren't supposed to print nudity.) I said I can't avoid seeing the top couple photos and don't care anyway. She later explained they were BDSM photos for "her man in jail" layered between photos of their son.
Had an old guy come in regularly to print photos of specifically nude large black women for "art."
On a serious note we had someone stalking children and taking photos of a playground from afar once, we called the cops.
5. This gig economy is going too far.
At my family shop, a guy came in asking to frame three pictures of this topless girl (photographed from the waist up) wearing fairy wings. He wanted to hang the pictures in his recently remodeled bathroom. Whatever. To each their own.
Then he started talking about how the girl in the picture was his 19-year-old daughter.
The whole thing was suddenly questionable until the daughter walked in and got all excited about how great the pictures turned out and how she loved the framing option.
She was an aspiring model and this was one of the ways in which she wanted to promote herself.
You read that correctly. A 19-year-old aspiring model wanted to promote her talent by having her parents hang topless pictures of herself in their bathroom and her parents thought this was a great idea.
4. Great plan.
I worked at a Walmart electronics around 2006, a buddy of mine worked in the Photo Lab at the front of the store. During my 2 years working there the cops had to be called 3 times to the photo lab and he was the one to find the images each time.
Should have gotten his wife to do it. You can't charge a husband and wife for the same crime.
I have the worst f**king attorneys.
3. Lock him up.
I worked for Walgreens photo lab for a couple of years. By far the worst was a series of pictures that this old man came in to get developed. All of them were a close up of his junk, with a giant key chain (think janitors keys) tied to a rope hanging off his junk. All of the pictures were of him swinging it around like he was trying to make his manhood a clock.
2. Waffles?
Oh sh*t, it's my time.
I used to work at a Target photo lab and the nicest sweetest woman asked me how to print out a few digital photos. I showed her, and left her to do it. She hit print and let me know she'd pick them up in a few mins.
The printer in the lab started printing them out. My buddy comes back to talk to me and we're looking at the photos as they come out. (We often did this so if there was an error on our end we could re-print) then my buddy suddenly stops talking. Out comes a photo of a woman's nether-regions, but like, something wrong with it. Some sort of infection.
The woman came back as they were finishing up, clearly seeing that we were able to see what had been printed. I gave her the photos and she left. She bought cereal too.
I don't know why you'd print that - maybe for a doctor or something. I don't know. This was in 2011, I hope it's better.
I've had an ingrown hair on my ass cheek once and wanted a really good look up close.
Thankfully, it was in the age of digital pics. I couldn't get a great pic so I ended up taking a vid. I'm so glad no one else had to see that.
And I surely wouldn't want to develop a pic of my crotch but if I needed a better look ill sure as heck get a pic on my phone rather than breaking my neck to see my nethers haha
Now I just need to hope my kids don't look at my cloud when I die.
1. Did Nazi that coming.
Had a nice old guy come by back in the late 1990's, asked if we'd want to see some old photos of him in uniform during the war.
Turns out he wore a lot more field grey than khaki.
