So as of the end of March, I will officially be a free agent.
I don't want to say that I will be unemployed, although that's technically correct. But even in the light of my apparent backward motion, I see the potential for many steps forward over the next year.
To sum up briefly, after trying to resolve a situation at work to no avail, I made the decision to talk to the supervisor about my reduced hours and wage, and he began to suggest alternatives, none of which really solved the core problem. Then, after I stopped him, I took a more frank approach, and explained that I was aware of how the higher ups thought of me and my work, and the fact that they were not happy with my 2009 performance. I added that, between him and myself, I didn't think it was a secret to him that I have become increasingly more unhappy over the past view years with the way the work was going. I didn't mention it to him is such concrete terms, but let's face it, I've been with these guys for over eight years and I'm still taking out the garbage most of the time.
When he heard that, he responded with a monologue that basically confirmed everything I suspected for a while, which was that I was being groomed for replacement. In fact a different person is due to come on starting next week in the department. So I was disappointed but not shocked to hear this news.
Actually, I was more relieved than anything else, because it seems as though I will be let go due to a shortage of work, rather than by a vote of no-confidence. The plan is that I will remain on the payroll until the end of March, attempting to complete some projects that got put on the back burner over the past year. These are things I can do from home and on my own time, so this solves the problem of non-existent daycare for my daughter. I'll be given four weeks notice at the beginning of the month, and then given a severance.
It seems like a downer, but in fact I have big plans. Since I was planning to start a business doing graphics as a freelance anyway (I have made many contacts in the past years that I'm sure I can call upon), and a specialty graphics idea that I want to start with a friend of mine, I'm going to incorporate, and start contracting. This is something I can do almost immediately, with very little outlay of cash (basically the cost of incorporation, a few hundred bucks) and I can continue to do work for my ex-employer (they certainly need me on standby) and others as well in the meantime. Plus I will have the flexibility to still look for bona fide work and take some courses I've wanted to for some time.
I can honestly say that for the first time in possibly my life, I'm looking at a perceived negative situation in a positive way, and I gotta tell you it feels pretty good. As I've been saying for a long time, I've got a lot of areas in my life that are coming together and the work situation was not one of them... until now.
I also want to say that I've had a lot of support from family and friends when I've kept them up to date on this particular news, and everyone has been really optimistic. It really helps a lot, guys. Thank you.
Diplomacy & Tact In The Absence Of Reason
Today at work I was handed a letter on company letterhead and was asked to sign it, after getting the gist of it. This was given to me at five minutes to five at the end of the day. It detailed a change in the working hours of all full time employees. Their great idea is to stagger three shifts so that there is at least one person in the department from 9am to 9pm. But this change reduces full time employees from a guaranteed bi-weekly eighty hours to sixty. Effectively, this cuts two hours from my day and $350 from my bi weekly paycheck after taxes. This was strike three for me.
I should point out that there have been countless number of strikes over the course of my eight year employment with this company, but for the purposes of metaphor, I'm only counting the most recent and most major ones. The fact that I have been working here this long at all is only due to two factors: a ridiculous sense of loyalty and a firm desire to keep a status quo and myself in food and shelter. But my tolerance is fast fading.
In Tarantino fashion, let's cut scene back to strike one. My employer recently changed head offices from a convenient location 25 minutes walk from my house to a remote location which requires me to take two busses and a taxi to get to. It completely screwed up my schedule with my daughter and required her to change school busses in order for her to go to daycare before school as well as after. This was a minor yet annoying alteration, so I was able to mostly adjust to this.
Strike two was the announcement in early January that salaried employees were now to be switched to hourly. This in itself was not a strike, because I admitted to all my superiors that I found the salary arrangement too difficult. While I enjoyed the constant paycheck amount, I had a child and I could not work overtime as a single parent, therefore when ever I missed a day, I was at odds with myself to reclaim those hours, which began to pile up. There were many hours in the spring that I took off in order to get my daughter home and set up, and there were a few sick days too, some at the end of the year when Drew had a kidney infection and was in the hospital for four days. As a result I was constantly harangued to break even with the time which was in excess of thirty hours at its peak. I did make a conserted effort but it was too much and there was not enough time to get to zero. So I admit my failing.
The second strike actually came from their not mentioning it until the policy was implimented. I was in the middle of budgeting myself to pay of previous debts under my new living arrangement with Sandra, and the prospects looked good - I would be out of debt before the end of the year. This would screw it all up. I tried to find out whether or not they were bound by law to inform me of this change in advance, and of course they are not. Once again the common working joe gets the bum's rush. If they had done it when I asked for it, or notified me in advance I could have prepared for it. I suggested midway through last year and on another occasion that they switch me to hourly because I could relax somewhat and not feel indebted to the company. I also suggested they dock me incrementally in order reconcile their payroll, and they didn't respond to any of my suggestions. At the end of it all my supervisor went to bat for me and made arrangements to spiff me for the difference with the payroll department. Thus my aformentioned loyalty to him particularly.
Some clarification: the 'supervisor' for the record is my former employer, who once owned the company but sold more than half of it to a Toronto concern, and who is currently in the process of delegating the remainder of his duties to others. But he was the one that first hired me, and to whom I seem to have the most respect. In truth, he has been there for me on many occasions, helped me financially when I needed money to visit and eventually get custody of my daughter, and has always been a source of support on many issues. That said, he has also stated that the level to which he can continue that support is all but depleted.
On the other side of the coin, the Toronto people, the ones who sign the checks are the ones I have the problem with. They cut corners, they don't respect their employees, and cheap out in order to make the most profit for themselves. But we'll get to more of that later.
So after having these two strikes already forced upon me, I had to figure out how to deal with these less than ideal circumstances. The answer was the same as it always was the other times I got to this crossroad: try my best to do my job and not let the bastards get me down. This was after a sit down with the supervisor about the new year and the issues that the head office had with me. Among the items brought up were:
• missed hours
• quality of work
• attitude
The missed hours I could hardly argue with and I had to accept that with my previous explanation given. As for quality of work, this is hardly a cut and dried situation. With that in mind, lets take a trip into the wonderful world of graphic design as it relates to my current position.
There are three types of ads that we get. New ads, pickups, and revisions. Pickups and revisions are previously run ads and generally take between five and twenty minutes to complete. New ads, depending on their complexity can take up to two hours starting from scratch. Lets split the difference and say that pickups and revisions take ten minutes and new ads take an hour.
Each of our publications has about 35 ads in it, at least half of which are pickups or revisions. That leaves the other half as new ads. 17 new ads should take 17 hours and 18 pickups or revisions should take about three hours. Therefore, in manhours, each book should take abut 20 hours. Of course that's assuming that each ad only comes in once, but of course there are revisions and corrections, and sometimes the guy decides he wants to start over. On average, each ad comes back about three times. For the sake of conservation let us just assume that only half of the ads come back three times. So you can add another five hours to the total.
Now, we have 23 books on our largest run, each taking 25 hours. So the whole run takes about 575 manhours, or almost 24 days. Divide that by the number of graphics people working concurrently and each person is working for eight days on the run.
We currently have three people in the department. But the third person was only hired this January. Prior that, there were two of us. So each person was at that point working for 12 days on a run. There is also the time required to paginate the book and prepare it for press, basically an entire day in itself.
That may not seem like much to complain about, to the person who is outside the situation. But bear in mind that I'm being conservative here with the time factors. Realize that we aren't just doing the above example run. We currently run six different magazines on a staggered print schedule. Before one production run ends, another has already begun. Add to this the fact that we are also doing non-magazine jobs such as direct mail postcards, business cards, internal graphics and forms, Canada Post prep, the graphics work for three, count them, THREE other companies associated with the company, as well as answering phones, being forced to go to production meetings... the list goes on.
This rather long winded point that I'm trying to make is simply this... There isn't enough time to spend on any individual ad, you have to just crank them out, otherwise the whole thing would break down, disrupting the print schedule. So when I am being scolded about the quality of my work, I can't help but laugh. I have long since lost any graphical creativity I had in me thanks to this job. I have been shot down too many times when I thought I've done something that would be liked, that I didn't bother to try anymore. And realistically, when you have to rifle through your work so much, you can't be truly creative.
Most of the time, advertising is not a place for creativity. It is a place for doing what you are told, even if it completely goes against your sensibilities. Because that's what the client is paying for.
The thing about 'quality of work' that keeps coming back to haunt me is because of a high profile client whose ad ran with a wrong phone number. The blame for that is being placed squarely on yours truly. For the folly of that scenario, please read on.
Normally in any advertising situation there is a multi-tiered proofing process. The ad gets submitted by an ad rep and done by the designer. When completed, the designer proofs it to make sure that everything is correct and sends it back to the sales rep. The rep proofs it before sending it to the client. The client proofs it and either approves it for print or sends it back. Every time it passes through the chain of revisions, it is proofed by each person who handles it. Finally, the ad is proofed before peing placed in the grid and send to the printer as a finished document.
Now with all those people handling the document, does it seem reasonable that I am taking 100% of the blame for this mis-typed phone number? The client should have been the FIRST to notice it was wrong. With myself, the rep and the client and the art director all handling proofing duties (supposedly) the most responsibility I am willing to accept on this issue is 25%.
But none of that means anything because they will think and do what they want. Because they have all the power and sign the paychecks.
Thus we come to issue three: attitude. Well yes, given the tenor of this writing, I can admit that I have a bad attitude. But I assure you that I try my utmost to keep it in check while on the job. I must be doing alright, otherwise they would not have kept me for eight years. Nonetheless, I, as well as the other two people in my department are overworked and sometimes it gets the better of us. Having said that, the 'attitude' issue comes without any specific examples, and I have asked them to cite some. They cannot come up with a single one.
Its difficult to have a positive (or at least an apathetic) attitude when you try your best to do your job and still get told that it's not good enough. I'm not the perfect employee by most standards (I'm not even sure what the perfect employee might be like), but I do my job the best I can and I often do more than I am asked to do... even if it doesn't bring immediate rewards. The problem is that if you do that too often people expect it of you all the time, and sometimes you fall short and look bad.
Which all brings us back to today. The art director was the one that handed the letter to me and he tried to tell me that the 30 hours per week reduction was probably not going to fly because of the demands for hours during a production. But that still does not stop them from kicking me out at 3:00pm any other day. It's still a pay reduction and all overtime will have to be approved.
Following the announcement of reduced hours, there were several paragraphs specifically written for me, wherein they reiterated the concerns brought up at the previous sitdown I had. The general tenor of the letter was quite condescending and I took offence at some of the wording. It reminded me of being back in school and being told that I was on thin ice and would fail a grade if I didn't shape up.
My first thoughts before I formed my next sentence were to recall the events of the last two months. The production schedule of 2009 having been so intense, so delayed and so screwed up, the art director (a salaried position) had banked over 80 hours above his salary. So, naturally, he took a month off. That left me holding the fort for most of december and the first week of January. Normally these months are dead for the print and advertising industry (the Christmas push is done end of November and doesn't kick up again until just before Valentine's Day), but my place of employment is always the exception. There were still all those other jobs to be done; the standalones, the other three companies, and a bunch of long term projects that I had to put off completing until this particular 'dead period'. Of course I never got to any of my projects, because the period wasn't dead at all, and I am being scolded for that too. One of them is the ad archive, a tool for the salesmen, which is grossly backlogged, and has no hope of being updated under these new guidelines. I have begged for someone to outsource this, but nothing ever happens.
I held things together quite well for those weeks alone, jumping when I was told to jump, and I think I did it well. I worked so hard that I began to get very pent up and experienced a long stint of heart palpatations that I can only attribute to stress. They called me on Christmas Eve and asked me to do an emergency job, when I was supposed to be off and spending time with my daughter, a period of time I was allowed by my supervisor, but I offered to be available 'just in case'.
He should not have been allowed to bank so many hours and disappear for a month. He left me with half finished projects I've never touched and had no idea what their status was or in many instances where to find the files. I don't blame him, I blame the general mismanagement of the production schedule and the company, and the fact that there is no structure to the organization, no prioritization of tasks (everything seems urgent) and no adequate communication among the ranks.
I find everything out through the trickle-down theory. I find out about a policy after its been implemented and too late to give input. I'm given too many tasks at once and not enough time to complete them correctly. I'm given conflicting instructions and policies that are changed after a week. I suppose this is nothing new in any workplace. But it's not something I deal well with. I prefer order, clear instructions and tasks, and not having to wonder how I'm going to get screwed over every day. Call me crazy...
I came back in January with the hopes that things would get better. I began to offer options to increase productivity and streamline the process. I crossed all my I's and dotted all my T's and tried to bring everyone together for the benefit of all, realizing that the company's growth is surpassing the workforce. Salesmen are being hired willy nilly and new publications and editions are being added every month, but the graphics department is somehow experiencing a budget crisis. This ... doesn't ... make ... any ... sense. If you sell more franchises, you make more money. It's proportional, or at least it should be, in theory. You can't double your publications and not add to your designers. But I guess I'm asking too much from the world of business, when people are still crying resession, boo hoo.
The long and the short of it is that I didn't sign the letter. I left the office abruptly before I said something I was going to regret. The letter and the announcement was yet another slap in the face, and categorically refuse to sign any document that I don't agree with.
Some say not signing the letter will be reason enough for them to become disciplnary with me, but I don't see that at all. They need an experienced employee as much as I need a job, there is no time to retrain someone. And, really, regardless of whether I sign it or not they are still going to do what they want so it really doesn't matter what I do.
Some are concerned that I am going into work expecting to get fired, or to quit outright, but I'm not there yet. I've worked to hard to get out of the mire to this meagre position in life to throw it away out of anger and a sense of entitlement. I'm trying to be fair and admit that I'm not perfect, and I'm not about to jeopardize my daughter's quality of life by acting without a backup plan.
A friend of mine who has been through this before suggested that I have two courses of action at this point. I can respond to the letter and ask for clarification on the 'issues' contained therein, and ask for suggestions to improve a 'perceived problem'... the idea being that I am not at that point acknowledging or agreeing with the contents of the letter or its issues. He suggested also asking for some face time with the decision makers in an effort to help change their perceptions of a problem. That's certainly one way to go. Correpsonding by letter or through an intermediary is certainly not the same as face to face, but I don't think Dale Carnegie is going to work in this scenario because my perception is that these people are a joke. I frankly cannot stand to be in the same room as them. It's that bad.
The other option he suggested was that this really isn't worth fighting for. The way the letter is written is quite clearly trying to set me up as the weakest link in the chain, since they are having organizational issues on their end as well, and since they must appear to be above reproach, the blame has to go to somone. In light of that, it seems clear that I should pursue another path. That is something that I've been putting off for a lot longer than I care to say, but I feel the time has finally come to make the big push and get out before I lose my sanity. Not the best jump-off point to start a job hunt, but is there really a good one?
I have been doing graphics in general and this job in particular for eight years. It was only meant to be a temporary job to get me through back in 2001. I've really, really had enough. As I was saying to Sandra the other day, the fact that my job means nothing in the grand scheme of things is a great source of distress for me. I don't help anyone in this job. I don't make a difference in anyone's life when I'm there. I just add to the already bloated and garish behemoth known as advertising, and I work in an industry which is known as one of the most wasteful in terms of paper and resources. And for what? At the end of the day does anyone really give a shit about yet another piece of unsolicited advertising in their mailbox, or that I personally helped create it? Of course they don't. And neither do I.
Regardless of who is right or wrong in this mess, or whether I'm a whiny baby who is llucky to have a job, and who should just suck it up, as some random people out there might think, there is a bottom line: a lot of other aspects of my life are starting to come together but this is one area where I'm not satisfied, and I just can't tolerate it anymore. I need a paradigm shift of some sort, and I think I'm on the heels of figuring out where it might lead. I shouldn't wake up dreading the day ahead, it's just not right. Something needs to be done and soon.
I should point out that there have been countless number of strikes over the course of my eight year employment with this company, but for the purposes of metaphor, I'm only counting the most recent and most major ones. The fact that I have been working here this long at all is only due to two factors: a ridiculous sense of loyalty and a firm desire to keep a status quo and myself in food and shelter. But my tolerance is fast fading.
In Tarantino fashion, let's cut scene back to strike one. My employer recently changed head offices from a convenient location 25 minutes walk from my house to a remote location which requires me to take two busses and a taxi to get to. It completely screwed up my schedule with my daughter and required her to change school busses in order for her to go to daycare before school as well as after. This was a minor yet annoying alteration, so I was able to mostly adjust to this.
Strike two was the announcement in early January that salaried employees were now to be switched to hourly. This in itself was not a strike, because I admitted to all my superiors that I found the salary arrangement too difficult. While I enjoyed the constant paycheck amount, I had a child and I could not work overtime as a single parent, therefore when ever I missed a day, I was at odds with myself to reclaim those hours, which began to pile up. There were many hours in the spring that I took off in order to get my daughter home and set up, and there were a few sick days too, some at the end of the year when Drew had a kidney infection and was in the hospital for four days. As a result I was constantly harangued to break even with the time which was in excess of thirty hours at its peak. I did make a conserted effort but it was too much and there was not enough time to get to zero. So I admit my failing.
The second strike actually came from their not mentioning it until the policy was implimented. I was in the middle of budgeting myself to pay of previous debts under my new living arrangement with Sandra, and the prospects looked good - I would be out of debt before the end of the year. This would screw it all up. I tried to find out whether or not they were bound by law to inform me of this change in advance, and of course they are not. Once again the common working joe gets the bum's rush. If they had done it when I asked for it, or notified me in advance I could have prepared for it. I suggested midway through last year and on another occasion that they switch me to hourly because I could relax somewhat and not feel indebted to the company. I also suggested they dock me incrementally in order reconcile their payroll, and they didn't respond to any of my suggestions. At the end of it all my supervisor went to bat for me and made arrangements to spiff me for the difference with the payroll department. Thus my aformentioned loyalty to him particularly.
Some clarification: the 'supervisor' for the record is my former employer, who once owned the company but sold more than half of it to a Toronto concern, and who is currently in the process of delegating the remainder of his duties to others. But he was the one that first hired me, and to whom I seem to have the most respect. In truth, he has been there for me on many occasions, helped me financially when I needed money to visit and eventually get custody of my daughter, and has always been a source of support on many issues. That said, he has also stated that the level to which he can continue that support is all but depleted.
On the other side of the coin, the Toronto people, the ones who sign the checks are the ones I have the problem with. They cut corners, they don't respect their employees, and cheap out in order to make the most profit for themselves. But we'll get to more of that later.
So after having these two strikes already forced upon me, I had to figure out how to deal with these less than ideal circumstances. The answer was the same as it always was the other times I got to this crossroad: try my best to do my job and not let the bastards get me down. This was after a sit down with the supervisor about the new year and the issues that the head office had with me. Among the items brought up were:
• missed hours
• quality of work
• attitude
The missed hours I could hardly argue with and I had to accept that with my previous explanation given. As for quality of work, this is hardly a cut and dried situation. With that in mind, lets take a trip into the wonderful world of graphic design as it relates to my current position.
There are three types of ads that we get. New ads, pickups, and revisions. Pickups and revisions are previously run ads and generally take between five and twenty minutes to complete. New ads, depending on their complexity can take up to two hours starting from scratch. Lets split the difference and say that pickups and revisions take ten minutes and new ads take an hour.
Each of our publications has about 35 ads in it, at least half of which are pickups or revisions. That leaves the other half as new ads. 17 new ads should take 17 hours and 18 pickups or revisions should take about three hours. Therefore, in manhours, each book should take abut 20 hours. Of course that's assuming that each ad only comes in once, but of course there are revisions and corrections, and sometimes the guy decides he wants to start over. On average, each ad comes back about three times. For the sake of conservation let us just assume that only half of the ads come back three times. So you can add another five hours to the total.
Now, we have 23 books on our largest run, each taking 25 hours. So the whole run takes about 575 manhours, or almost 24 days. Divide that by the number of graphics people working concurrently and each person is working for eight days on the run.
We currently have three people in the department. But the third person was only hired this January. Prior that, there were two of us. So each person was at that point working for 12 days on a run. There is also the time required to paginate the book and prepare it for press, basically an entire day in itself.
That may not seem like much to complain about, to the person who is outside the situation. But bear in mind that I'm being conservative here with the time factors. Realize that we aren't just doing the above example run. We currently run six different magazines on a staggered print schedule. Before one production run ends, another has already begun. Add to this the fact that we are also doing non-magazine jobs such as direct mail postcards, business cards, internal graphics and forms, Canada Post prep, the graphics work for three, count them, THREE other companies associated with the company, as well as answering phones, being forced to go to production meetings... the list goes on.
This rather long winded point that I'm trying to make is simply this... There isn't enough time to spend on any individual ad, you have to just crank them out, otherwise the whole thing would break down, disrupting the print schedule. So when I am being scolded about the quality of my work, I can't help but laugh. I have long since lost any graphical creativity I had in me thanks to this job. I have been shot down too many times when I thought I've done something that would be liked, that I didn't bother to try anymore. And realistically, when you have to rifle through your work so much, you can't be truly creative.
Most of the time, advertising is not a place for creativity. It is a place for doing what you are told, even if it completely goes against your sensibilities. Because that's what the client is paying for.
The thing about 'quality of work' that keeps coming back to haunt me is because of a high profile client whose ad ran with a wrong phone number. The blame for that is being placed squarely on yours truly. For the folly of that scenario, please read on.
Normally in any advertising situation there is a multi-tiered proofing process. The ad gets submitted by an ad rep and done by the designer. When completed, the designer proofs it to make sure that everything is correct and sends it back to the sales rep. The rep proofs it before sending it to the client. The client proofs it and either approves it for print or sends it back. Every time it passes through the chain of revisions, it is proofed by each person who handles it. Finally, the ad is proofed before peing placed in the grid and send to the printer as a finished document.
Now with all those people handling the document, does it seem reasonable that I am taking 100% of the blame for this mis-typed phone number? The client should have been the FIRST to notice it was wrong. With myself, the rep and the client and the art director all handling proofing duties (supposedly) the most responsibility I am willing to accept on this issue is 25%.
But none of that means anything because they will think and do what they want. Because they have all the power and sign the paychecks.
Thus we come to issue three: attitude. Well yes, given the tenor of this writing, I can admit that I have a bad attitude. But I assure you that I try my utmost to keep it in check while on the job. I must be doing alright, otherwise they would not have kept me for eight years. Nonetheless, I, as well as the other two people in my department are overworked and sometimes it gets the better of us. Having said that, the 'attitude' issue comes without any specific examples, and I have asked them to cite some. They cannot come up with a single one.
Its difficult to have a positive (or at least an apathetic) attitude when you try your best to do your job and still get told that it's not good enough. I'm not the perfect employee by most standards (I'm not even sure what the perfect employee might be like), but I do my job the best I can and I often do more than I am asked to do... even if it doesn't bring immediate rewards. The problem is that if you do that too often people expect it of you all the time, and sometimes you fall short and look bad.
Which all brings us back to today. The art director was the one that handed the letter to me and he tried to tell me that the 30 hours per week reduction was probably not going to fly because of the demands for hours during a production. But that still does not stop them from kicking me out at 3:00pm any other day. It's still a pay reduction and all overtime will have to be approved.
Following the announcement of reduced hours, there were several paragraphs specifically written for me, wherein they reiterated the concerns brought up at the previous sitdown I had. The general tenor of the letter was quite condescending and I took offence at some of the wording. It reminded me of being back in school and being told that I was on thin ice and would fail a grade if I didn't shape up.
My first thoughts before I formed my next sentence were to recall the events of the last two months. The production schedule of 2009 having been so intense, so delayed and so screwed up, the art director (a salaried position) had banked over 80 hours above his salary. So, naturally, he took a month off. That left me holding the fort for most of december and the first week of January. Normally these months are dead for the print and advertising industry (the Christmas push is done end of November and doesn't kick up again until just before Valentine's Day), but my place of employment is always the exception. There were still all those other jobs to be done; the standalones, the other three companies, and a bunch of long term projects that I had to put off completing until this particular 'dead period'. Of course I never got to any of my projects, because the period wasn't dead at all, and I am being scolded for that too. One of them is the ad archive, a tool for the salesmen, which is grossly backlogged, and has no hope of being updated under these new guidelines. I have begged for someone to outsource this, but nothing ever happens.
I held things together quite well for those weeks alone, jumping when I was told to jump, and I think I did it well. I worked so hard that I began to get very pent up and experienced a long stint of heart palpatations that I can only attribute to stress. They called me on Christmas Eve and asked me to do an emergency job, when I was supposed to be off and spending time with my daughter, a period of time I was allowed by my supervisor, but I offered to be available 'just in case'.
He should not have been allowed to bank so many hours and disappear for a month. He left me with half finished projects I've never touched and had no idea what their status was or in many instances where to find the files. I don't blame him, I blame the general mismanagement of the production schedule and the company, and the fact that there is no structure to the organization, no prioritization of tasks (everything seems urgent) and no adequate communication among the ranks.
I find everything out through the trickle-down theory. I find out about a policy after its been implemented and too late to give input. I'm given too many tasks at once and not enough time to complete them correctly. I'm given conflicting instructions and policies that are changed after a week. I suppose this is nothing new in any workplace. But it's not something I deal well with. I prefer order, clear instructions and tasks, and not having to wonder how I'm going to get screwed over every day. Call me crazy...
I came back in January with the hopes that things would get better. I began to offer options to increase productivity and streamline the process. I crossed all my I's and dotted all my T's and tried to bring everyone together for the benefit of all, realizing that the company's growth is surpassing the workforce. Salesmen are being hired willy nilly and new publications and editions are being added every month, but the graphics department is somehow experiencing a budget crisis. This ... doesn't ... make ... any ... sense. If you sell more franchises, you make more money. It's proportional, or at least it should be, in theory. You can't double your publications and not add to your designers. But I guess I'm asking too much from the world of business, when people are still crying resession, boo hoo.
The long and the short of it is that I didn't sign the letter. I left the office abruptly before I said something I was going to regret. The letter and the announcement was yet another slap in the face, and categorically refuse to sign any document that I don't agree with.
Some say not signing the letter will be reason enough for them to become disciplnary with me, but I don't see that at all. They need an experienced employee as much as I need a job, there is no time to retrain someone. And, really, regardless of whether I sign it or not they are still going to do what they want so it really doesn't matter what I do.
Some are concerned that I am going into work expecting to get fired, or to quit outright, but I'm not there yet. I've worked to hard to get out of the mire to this meagre position in life to throw it away out of anger and a sense of entitlement. I'm trying to be fair and admit that I'm not perfect, and I'm not about to jeopardize my daughter's quality of life by acting without a backup plan.
A friend of mine who has been through this before suggested that I have two courses of action at this point. I can respond to the letter and ask for clarification on the 'issues' contained therein, and ask for suggestions to improve a 'perceived problem'... the idea being that I am not at that point acknowledging or agreeing with the contents of the letter or its issues. He suggested also asking for some face time with the decision makers in an effort to help change their perceptions of a problem. That's certainly one way to go. Correpsonding by letter or through an intermediary is certainly not the same as face to face, but I don't think Dale Carnegie is going to work in this scenario because my perception is that these people are a joke. I frankly cannot stand to be in the same room as them. It's that bad.
The other option he suggested was that this really isn't worth fighting for. The way the letter is written is quite clearly trying to set me up as the weakest link in the chain, since they are having organizational issues on their end as well, and since they must appear to be above reproach, the blame has to go to somone. In light of that, it seems clear that I should pursue another path. That is something that I've been putting off for a lot longer than I care to say, but I feel the time has finally come to make the big push and get out before I lose my sanity. Not the best jump-off point to start a job hunt, but is there really a good one?
I have been doing graphics in general and this job in particular for eight years. It was only meant to be a temporary job to get me through back in 2001. I've really, really had enough. As I was saying to Sandra the other day, the fact that my job means nothing in the grand scheme of things is a great source of distress for me. I don't help anyone in this job. I don't make a difference in anyone's life when I'm there. I just add to the already bloated and garish behemoth known as advertising, and I work in an industry which is known as one of the most wasteful in terms of paper and resources. And for what? At the end of the day does anyone really give a shit about yet another piece of unsolicited advertising in their mailbox, or that I personally helped create it? Of course they don't. And neither do I.
Regardless of who is right or wrong in this mess, or whether I'm a whiny baby who is llucky to have a job, and who should just suck it up, as some random people out there might think, there is a bottom line: a lot of other aspects of my life are starting to come together but this is one area where I'm not satisfied, and I just can't tolerate it anymore. I need a paradigm shift of some sort, and I think I'm on the heels of figuring out where it might lead. I shouldn't wake up dreading the day ahead, it's just not right. Something needs to be done and soon.
The Best Moments of TV: My List (Part 1)
I've been watching a lot of TV episodes from my collection lately and marveling about how good some of them are. I decided to make a list of the episodes that had the deepest impact on me over the years. The eps tend to be on the emotionally hard hitting side, but don't worry, I'll start slow, with a few oldies but goodies.
M*A*S*H - "Dreams"
I was a big fan of this show when I was younger, thanks to my mom, although at the time I didn't get a lot of the jokes, or even the context of the humour. I do remember that the humanity of the characters showed through to me even then; the fact that they were all trapped in that war, the hopelessness, constantly being called upon to go above and beyond, and somehow managing to get through it.
There are so many good episodes of this show, stories that were emotional, but rather than pick the obvious one (the one where Henry Blake is killed off at the end) or the finale, I chose 'Dreams'. I doubt many people would have picked this for their lists, but I remember being particularly impressed with this one when it aired. Basically, the plot is a 36-hour non-stop barrage of wounded soldiers in the OR, and the surgical team works like crazy to get through them all. At various points in the episode, the main characters fall asleep for very brief periods and we are privy to their dreams.
Margaret Houlihan dreams of being with a lover in a bed in a field, until he gets up in the middle and marches away with a line of soldiers, leaving her alone with a pile of wounded men who have suddenly appeared there. BJ Honeycutt dreams of dancing with his wife, Peg, in the OR until he is called away to operate. Klinger sees himself on an operating table through the window of his favourite deli in Toledo. Col. Potter rides through the fields of his home on his favourite horse, Sophie, sees himself as a child and hears his mother calling him in for dinner.
Perhaps my favourite dream is the one that Winchester has, where he sees himself as a magician, performing tricks for the OR personnel, but when a wounded soldier is brought in, rather than operate, he simply does more tricks, which of course don't help the man. the soldier dies on the table a moment later, right in front of Charles with everyone looking on. As the body is carted away, Charles desperately tap dances waving sparklers which is read as a vain attempt to 'take it back' or somehow make himself appear better in the face of his failure as a doctor. There are some very nice shots in this dream and an especially nice close up of Charles with beads of sweat as he realizes the futility of what he's doing.
Finally, Hawkeye's dream finds him being addressed in the mess hall as though he is back in medical school. When he cannot explain the procedure for reattaching a limb, the professor tells him to remove his arm which is then confiscated (they use mannequin arms). Winchester removes his other arm and it's thrown into a lake where he find himself in a boat among a sea of other limbs. Finally he comes upon a stretcher containing a wounded man, and of course he cannot operate now because he's armless. It's very disturbing when you allow yourself to get into the feel of the sequence.
The contrast between the real and the dream states in this episode is very jarring at times (much like real dreams or nightmares can be) and you can tell the director, actors, screenwriters and filmographers has a lot of fun working on this one. They experiment with sets, costumes, camera angles and sound effects and it's all very avant garde when you look at it as a whole. I thought it was very effective at representing the underlying disparity of the characters and what they were forced to experience in their daily lives in Korea.
All In The Family - "Edith's 50th Birthday"
Like Mash, All In The Family had more than its share of great episodes. The show is widely regarded as being groundbreaking, and one of the first shows to deal with tough topics like racism, prejudice, homosexuality and getting away with it because of the Archie Bunker character -- being surrounded by people who contradicted his opinions and viewpoints made what he had to say seem perhaps less offensive because of the way he was portrayed, and because everyone around him was the exact opposite.
But apart from Archie, One of the best eps I've seen of this show was "Edith's 50th Birthday", because of the subject matter and it's portrayal in the context of a comedy. Some of the most effective scenes in TV and movies are the ones that mix comedy and sudden calamity because you are caught off guard. So on the occasion of Edith's birthday, when she is found alone in the house while her family is out preparing for her surprise party, you aren't expecting for her to be attacked by a rapist.
Posing as a detective, she unknowingly lets the man into the house, and he explains that there have been reports of a molester in the neighbourhood. He soon drops the act as he describes the assailant as being very much like himself. The man becomes more forceful (but not as much as someone in real life might -- it's clear they wanted to tone down the rape angle, the so-called rapist comes off as being almost polite at times) and pushes her down. She tries to dissuade him as he starts to remove his clothing by explaining that she's 'as old as Lindburg's airplane' and even offering him a cup of coffee. The next few minutes come off as very awkward as the man clearly wants to do this but Edith is rambling about how she has to be at her surprise party at 6:00.
When the man holds her down and starts his advance, the phone rings and Edith says she has to answer it because it's Archie who knows she is home - if she doesn't answer he will think something's up and come back to check on her. He allows it, but pulls out a gun and says to get rid of him, wherein Edith starts to panic. It's not Archie after all but her freind Cybil whom she promptly gets rids of. The man forces a kiss and Edith says she's gonna throw up. She runs into the kitchen and he is close behind pulling the shades. She says she has to go the bathroom, he follows her. She tries everything to stall him but to no avail. he eventually gets wise and ties her arms together.
When archie returns to the house and finds the door locked, the man pulls the gun again and tells her to say she'll be there in a minute. He threatens to kill them both unless she gets rid of him - he hides in the closet. A very difficult scene comes next when Archie rambles on about the punch bowl he needs, clearly unaware that Edith is close to tears and in serious trouble. He leaves, Edith breaks down and the man emerges from the closet.
Up to this point, Edith has mostly been shown as a 'dingbat' and not the most intelligent person in the world. But she does have brief moments of clarity and this episode shows one of them. When she smells something burning in the kitchen, she runs in and finds her cake smouldering in the oven. He tells her to take it out, and she does, but then jams the burning hot pan right in his face. He screams and tries to grab her, and she knees him in the crotch and pushes him out the door. Then she hightails it out the front door and over to Archie at the party. While they all sing Happy Birthday she cries on his shoulder, and no one is aware of what happened, until part two that is.
Because this show was taped in front of a live audience, there is a lot of misplaced laughter in the soundtrack. I think this is because they really weren't sure where or how far they were going to take this premise, weren't sure they were even supposed to laugh, and were really generally uncomfortable with what they were seeing. But that was exactly what I think the writers intended, so you can infer that they suceeded in what they were trying to say with this screenplay. Also, the writers wisely broke up the tension by cutting away to the scene of the party now and then. Given that this was probably the first time that rape had been openly fictionalized on prime time TV, they wanted to give the viewers a break, to prevent them from turning the channel due to the uncomfortable scenes with Edith. But there is a payoff for enduring the tough to watch parts, evidenced by the live audience's reaction to Edith's action and escape -- they cheer the loudest I've ever heard them cheer during the entire run of the show.
M*A*S*H - "Dreams"
I was a big fan of this show when I was younger, thanks to my mom, although at the time I didn't get a lot of the jokes, or even the context of the humour. I do remember that the humanity of the characters showed through to me even then; the fact that they were all trapped in that war, the hopelessness, constantly being called upon to go above and beyond, and somehow managing to get through it.
There are so many good episodes of this show, stories that were emotional, but rather than pick the obvious one (the one where Henry Blake is killed off at the end) or the finale, I chose 'Dreams'. I doubt many people would have picked this for their lists, but I remember being particularly impressed with this one when it aired. Basically, the plot is a 36-hour non-stop barrage of wounded soldiers in the OR, and the surgical team works like crazy to get through them all. At various points in the episode, the main characters fall asleep for very brief periods and we are privy to their dreams.
Margaret Houlihan dreams of being with a lover in a bed in a field, until he gets up in the middle and marches away with a line of soldiers, leaving her alone with a pile of wounded men who have suddenly appeared there. BJ Honeycutt dreams of dancing with his wife, Peg, in the OR until he is called away to operate. Klinger sees himself on an operating table through the window of his favourite deli in Toledo. Col. Potter rides through the fields of his home on his favourite horse, Sophie, sees himself as a child and hears his mother calling him in for dinner.
Perhaps my favourite dream is the one that Winchester has, where he sees himself as a magician, performing tricks for the OR personnel, but when a wounded soldier is brought in, rather than operate, he simply does more tricks, which of course don't help the man. the soldier dies on the table a moment later, right in front of Charles with everyone looking on. As the body is carted away, Charles desperately tap dances waving sparklers which is read as a vain attempt to 'take it back' or somehow make himself appear better in the face of his failure as a doctor. There are some very nice shots in this dream and an especially nice close up of Charles with beads of sweat as he realizes the futility of what he's doing.
Finally, Hawkeye's dream finds him being addressed in the mess hall as though he is back in medical school. When he cannot explain the procedure for reattaching a limb, the professor tells him to remove his arm which is then confiscated (they use mannequin arms). Winchester removes his other arm and it's thrown into a lake where he find himself in a boat among a sea of other limbs. Finally he comes upon a stretcher containing a wounded man, and of course he cannot operate now because he's armless. It's very disturbing when you allow yourself to get into the feel of the sequence.
The contrast between the real and the dream states in this episode is very jarring at times (much like real dreams or nightmares can be) and you can tell the director, actors, screenwriters and filmographers has a lot of fun working on this one. They experiment with sets, costumes, camera angles and sound effects and it's all very avant garde when you look at it as a whole. I thought it was very effective at representing the underlying disparity of the characters and what they were forced to experience in their daily lives in Korea.
All In The Family - "Edith's 50th Birthday"
Like Mash, All In The Family had more than its share of great episodes. The show is widely regarded as being groundbreaking, and one of the first shows to deal with tough topics like racism, prejudice, homosexuality and getting away with it because of the Archie Bunker character -- being surrounded by people who contradicted his opinions and viewpoints made what he had to say seem perhaps less offensive because of the way he was portrayed, and because everyone around him was the exact opposite.
But apart from Archie, One of the best eps I've seen of this show was "Edith's 50th Birthday", because of the subject matter and it's portrayal in the context of a comedy. Some of the most effective scenes in TV and movies are the ones that mix comedy and sudden calamity because you are caught off guard. So on the occasion of Edith's birthday, when she is found alone in the house while her family is out preparing for her surprise party, you aren't expecting for her to be attacked by a rapist.
Posing as a detective, she unknowingly lets the man into the house, and he explains that there have been reports of a molester in the neighbourhood. He soon drops the act as he describes the assailant as being very much like himself. The man becomes more forceful (but not as much as someone in real life might -- it's clear they wanted to tone down the rape angle, the so-called rapist comes off as being almost polite at times) and pushes her down. She tries to dissuade him as he starts to remove his clothing by explaining that she's 'as old as Lindburg's airplane' and even offering him a cup of coffee. The next few minutes come off as very awkward as the man clearly wants to do this but Edith is rambling about how she has to be at her surprise party at 6:00.
When the man holds her down and starts his advance, the phone rings and Edith says she has to answer it because it's Archie who knows she is home - if she doesn't answer he will think something's up and come back to check on her. He allows it, but pulls out a gun and says to get rid of him, wherein Edith starts to panic. It's not Archie after all but her freind Cybil whom she promptly gets rids of. The man forces a kiss and Edith says she's gonna throw up. She runs into the kitchen and he is close behind pulling the shades. She says she has to go the bathroom, he follows her. She tries everything to stall him but to no avail. he eventually gets wise and ties her arms together.
When archie returns to the house and finds the door locked, the man pulls the gun again and tells her to say she'll be there in a minute. He threatens to kill them both unless she gets rid of him - he hides in the closet. A very difficult scene comes next when Archie rambles on about the punch bowl he needs, clearly unaware that Edith is close to tears and in serious trouble. He leaves, Edith breaks down and the man emerges from the closet.
Up to this point, Edith has mostly been shown as a 'dingbat' and not the most intelligent person in the world. But she does have brief moments of clarity and this episode shows one of them. When she smells something burning in the kitchen, she runs in and finds her cake smouldering in the oven. He tells her to take it out, and she does, but then jams the burning hot pan right in his face. He screams and tries to grab her, and she knees him in the crotch and pushes him out the door. Then she hightails it out the front door and over to Archie at the party. While they all sing Happy Birthday she cries on his shoulder, and no one is aware of what happened, until part two that is.
Because this show was taped in front of a live audience, there is a lot of misplaced laughter in the soundtrack. I think this is because they really weren't sure where or how far they were going to take this premise, weren't sure they were even supposed to laugh, and were really generally uncomfortable with what they were seeing. But that was exactly what I think the writers intended, so you can infer that they suceeded in what they were trying to say with this screenplay. Also, the writers wisely broke up the tension by cutting away to the scene of the party now and then. Given that this was probably the first time that rape had been openly fictionalized on prime time TV, they wanted to give the viewers a break, to prevent them from turning the channel due to the uncomfortable scenes with Edith. But there is a payoff for enduring the tough to watch parts, evidenced by the live audience's reaction to Edith's action and escape -- they cheer the loudest I've ever heard them cheer during the entire run of the show.
Hogwash Rebuttal
Editors note: I received a Facebook comment on my wall that was a lengthy rebuttal of my post, and I'd like to put my response to it here: I think even without the rebuttal included, my response will clarify a few things about what I wrote and point out an error or two.
Ok. let me take your points one by one, some of which are very good, and try to address them...
First off, I think I was clear in stating several times that what I had written was merely my opinion, and that people didn't have to agree if they didn't want to, a point which you've illustrated in your response to this. My main desire in writing what I wrote was to a) vent a little, and b) to advise people not to panic and to educate themselves before taking anyone's word for anything -- including what I think.
What I wrote was based on my own impressions and, granted, some of it may not have been complete or entirely accurate (even three hours of research and reading appears not to be thorough enough for something as low-impact as a blog post). I'm not a health professional or an educated man by comparison to others. People can and should make their own decisions about what to do in any situation, not just this. But it was a blog post after all, not placed in the venue of a medical website or other pedestal of authority. I think that most of the few people who read my blog and my FB page realize this is where I'm coming from.
As far as having diabetes is concerned, that is very unfortunate, and believe me when I tell you that I *am* hearing you on this. As you know my father died from it, and it was awful to watch, having received two amputations, and having died shortly after the second. However, I can't find a consistent answer either for or against the idea that H1N1 in its current state will infect or affect a diabetic any differently that someone without diabetes. In fact, people seem to be arguing over whether it's even an issue. Britain's NHS seems to think diabetics are no more likely to contract it than non-diabetics, and if they do, it may alter their blood sugar levels and require a diet modification, but not land them in a hospital per se. However, Canada's Public Health seems to think that diabetics are MORE at risk of contraction than others and that they should protect themselves accordingly.
So once again, it's difficult to tell people, as you have told me, and I have indeed suggested to people in my post, to 'research more' before they decide, when the information available is so contradictory and convoluded across the board. I have had my own troubles muddling through it as you can see... which is kind of my original point, and is why it was important for me to say what I said. In a situation like that, many people are likely to panic, and that is what they absolutely should NOT do. I hardly think that advising people not to panic and instead think clearly is a bad thing.
Moving on... you may well be correct about 1918, [he had stated that the Spanish flu back then was a killer and that a simple mutation of H1N1 could conceivably rival that strain in this situation. Ed.] I did not have time to delve too deeply into that realm, spending more time in 1976, but be that as it may, you are what-iffing. At the moment (as far as we know) things are not at that point yet. Medicine has progressed marvelously in the last century and we know more about viruses in general, we have a system of prevention in place with the CDC et al and the knowledge to act in a crisis (at least moreso than then). Spanish flu caught them off guard in 1918, it seems, and so it stands to reason that things got out of hand quickly. This is not 1918. To predict what *might* happen *if* H1N1 mutates into something more deadly is useless. There's always that possibility with any virus. If it does, there's nothing us normal people can do about it, that's a job for scientists and doctors. *We* can only protect ourselves as best we can, and what-iffing is only going to serve to give way to fear and panic.
As for me not getting the shot? I said it was my main reason, not my only reason. As you have pointed out I was off the mark on Tamiflu (I was tired at the end of writing that - I had those two items confused). [I had confused the Tamiflu drug as the 'flu shot/vaccine' when in it seems that it is in fact an antiviral that you take when you are already sick, an entirely different thing - I am still verifying this. Ed.] You were also partially correct that about the flu shot not containing the virus itself. I have since read that the vaccine in question does in fact contain dead virus bodies that are not supposed to harm you. Similarly, the nasal form of this contains live virus bodies that have been altered so as not to cause the illness [...] So I am willing to retract that portion of my post for the benefit of all readers and state that this is probably correct.
However, regarding my personal receipt of the actual flu shot, there is still the concern I currently have about some of the supporting ingredients in the mix (squaline, mercury); the validity and importance of which I am still looking into. There is also the idea that I personally may have some modicum of immunity since I found out from my mother that I was immunized in 1976 for that particular strain, although that seems unlikely from what I have read. There are other issues as well that I have, but suffice it to say I have enough doubts and questions to think twice or perhaps thrice until someone proves to me that my concerns are unfounded. I've never had a flu shot in my adult life, and have not been seriousy ill. Granted this is by no means a guarantee, but my personal stance on this still remains, if I ain't broke, don't fix me.
I repeat once again that this is my own choice, and while I stated in my post that I have been 'advising people' not to get the shot, it was hardly so clear cut as the advice I gave myself; perhaps I chose the wrong words in stating this in the writing... it was more along the lines of what I have already been saying: make the right choice for you, don't just get it because someone is foretelling doom and gloom about pandemics or that you are positively going to get it and die. Consider all viewpoints, even the ones that seem wrong to you. The fact of the matter is that there is an element of risk for each individual in getting the shot, albiet small possibilities, but still something to consider.
So what I'm saying is this: I think the general tenor of my advice makes it clear that it's simply that: "advice* that is coming from a layperson which can either be ignored or considered. I have seen and heard far more vehement standpoints about not getting the shot in Facebook and IRL than mine and some based on far more biased ideas. Furthermore, I think/hope I was clear in giving such advice, both in person and in on all other modes of communication, that I was only stating personal opinion. I tend to express myself this way when it comes to all sorts of topics -- I don't force my ideas on others and try to be tolerant and let people think for themselves.
I think I'm capable of conceding to any argument that refutes to my satisfaction something that I've said about this. You make a good point about flu-shot-abstainers inadvertently helping to spread the virus, but there is really nothing that can be done about this under our current system of government in North America. A recent US poll shows that roughly half of Americans will not volunteer to get the shot. Internet and social media is making this situation worse with people playing the telephone game and the message is getting garbled at the other end. Unless (or until) the governments of the world decree that everyone *must* receive a flu shot (which will likely cause an uproar), the only thing each of us has to help us decide is our own minds and the information we receive on the subject, and all I'm saying is make as an informed decision as you can. I can't tell people where to go to find the truth or the choice that suits them, I can only suggest they keep looking until they find it.
I will say this however about your comments -- they made me rethink and reconsider, to a degree, the points of my post to see if I was on the right track or not. It was enough to reconsider my thought that I should unilaterally decline the shot for my daughter and instead start up a dialog with her about it this evening, trying to give her both sides of the issue and see what she thought about it. It's still open for discussion. So I thank you for that because it allowed me to realize that I was not applying the same standards I was preaching about to someone in my own family (even if she is only six), simply because I have a position of caregiver over her.
I hope this clears the air a little and further clarifies my position on this.
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