Stupid Coworkers at Stupid Meetings

Two hour meeting...

That is a TWO HOUR MEETING that was SUPPOSED to be a ONE HOUR MEETING.

Ugh.

Did I ever mention that I can make the EXACT same decision that my coworkers make in 1/40th of the time? I must be super efficient!! They should pay me 40-times as much--heck even two times would be nice. Meh.

So, we spent about 40 minutes (allotted 20 minutes) discussing the timing--when the brochure was going to be mailed and how long the sale was going to run. I had decided, while designing the piece, that the sale should run from mid-January to the end of February. After 40 minutes of running around in circles, they decided it should run from Jan. 15th to Feb 28th. Riiiight.

THEN! After an hour of sitting through my coworkers literally BASHING my previous year's brochure, we were drawn into an impromptu meeting for another design.

In THAT meeting, I had to sit for an hour listening to how they wanted the focus to be on the coupon, when it was previously on our Partnership program. Finally at the end of the meeting, the CEO spoke up and said that the brochure's focus should be on the Partnership, not the coupon.

OF COURSE they all agreed.

Bastards.

Stupid Coworkers

Stupid Coworker - October 2004 Issue

Piper is one of my office-mates. She works in the marketing department with me and has been designing several brochures over the past couple of months. The brochures she designs promotes a learning seminar developed by Einstein. So, as one of the steps in designing a brochure, she has to go down to Einstein's office and get the brochure's design approved by Einstein--who normally adds several more chunks of text, obnoxious bullets, and gigantic pictures of speakers onto the cover of the brochure.

Spank-tacular

Prior to the design of her most-recent brochure, Colormist had also designed a brochure for Einstein for another learning seminar. She was horribly tired of bullets. So instead of putting a list together and plastering it on the cover of the brochure, she fell back on her years at the newspaper and made a hokey newspaper design. Large numbers with small text explaining the numbers. She knew, going into the design, that Einstein would love it. It was just his sort of lame advertising gimmick.

Of course he was instantly enamored and added five more gigantic numbers into the fray. Colormist was none-too-pleased and instantly was struck with a prophetic vision. She turned and apologized to Piper, for she knew the vision to be true.

Piper ventures down the dizzying hall to Einstein's lair. She hands over the brochure for his approval.

Einstein: "You know, this looks nice. I like the design. But I really like what you did the other time."

Piper: "With?"

Einstein: "You know the brochure you did for ANDR, the numbers."

Piper: "That wasn't me. I didn't design that."

Einstein: (insert condescending look and voice) "Does it matter?"

Piper: "Yeah. It wasn't me."

Now is it just me, or does Einstein seem to think that everyone that designs in the department shares one common brain? That we are really aliens that put our brains together, spit out a design, and then all commonly walk around with equal knowledge of everything ever produced in our department.

This might not seem like a big deal to some, but it seems that my department (out of all the other departments in the building) gets some seriously lame stereotypes:

1. The Cute Department
2. We're too young
3. We don't know how lawyers think because we're not lawyers (even though we work FOR lawyers)
4. We're all the same person (repeatedly people confuse our names, our projects, and where we sit).
5. We're emotionally tied to our designs
6. We don't think logically so we can't use databases
7. We're undereducated (regardless of the amount of schooling) and don't understand how to budget a business

The main kicker is the fact that we're not lawyers (which pretty much applies to all departments that don't have a law degree under their belts) so we know nothing.


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More interesting is their projected sales figures and their goals for registrations at the learning seminars. At one seminar (with previous attendance levels around 650 bodies) their new attendance goals are set 200 bodies higher than last year. Yes, this is WITHOUT any new markets, any new spectacular updates, and any new features to draw more people. It's just a random number that they're aiming for and we have to achieve.

Can you hold that hoop a little bit higher please? I don't think it's out of my reach yet. Thanks.