My undergraduate academic/financial plan was to utilize cooperative education ("co-op"), whereby school quarters alternate with quarters spent earning money at a full-time engineering job. Working in the New Orleans area would let me live at home for free, but I hadn't identified a local co-op job, so instead I found employment at a Kwik Kopy print shop, via a reference from my uncle Rusty, who worked in the paper industry.
The store was located in a classic two-story shotgun house on St. Charles Avenue between Polymnia & Euterpe (YOO-terp, per the New Orleans shibboleth); this photo is from a current-day Google Street View - apparently now the "Haus Of Hoodoo" spiritual depot occupies the building. Funnily enough, just as in high school, my days were spent in an old building on the streetcar line, a few feet from a Burger King. My Dad would drop me off on his way to work, though sometimes when he had an early meeting at City Hall I'd catch the streetcar at One Shell Square to make the last leg of the commute.
The owners were a nice couple: Morty & Valentine (she did most of the work). There was one other employee, a young guy who operated the small sheet-fed printing press on the premises. I learned the intricacies of photocopying ("When you say yellow, do you mean canary or goldenrod?"), made pads of NCR (carbonless) forms, used the large automated paper-cutter (operated via two thumb buttons to keep your hands safe), and helped lay things out on Aldus PageMaker. During my lunch break I'd go to the back room, microwave a baloney sandwich, and watch reruns of '60s sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie and Family Affair. A gray cat lived in the shop, and I remember hearing Aerosmith's "Rag Doll" play regularly on the radio.
I enjoyed that job, and my experience primed me for my future role overseeing the Daily Texan printing operation. Morty & Valentine were sufficiently impressed with the Serpas work ethic to hire my brother Tim for a summer job after his first year of college.