Three New Staff Members

Makes three new chances to ruin someone's life.

Okay, so TECHNICALLY "#2" has just transferred departments and is escaping Einstein's wrath, however I do feel that she won't find solace in this new position either. But, at least she's found a permanent job. She's a nice person. I hope she escapes this place alive.

Amazingly enough, STILL, ICE manages to hire people that will not help ease the workload in the departments that are suffering the most.

And, ICE doesn't seem to care what people have a degree in. Music, English, Science--it all relates to management in the end (apparently).

I need a new job.

ICE Employees ONLY

Picture this:

You walk into your private office's breakroom and see a sign over the magazine stand that says "Employees Only". Now, you know that your employer occassionally has customers, but you wouldn't think it would be a problem if those customers looked at a magazine while they wait for a product, right?

Most curious.

You then walk towards the fridgerator, which already was covered in self-important notes, and find two new notes. One in masking tape, complete with the masking tape roll hanging on the side of the fridge and a blue marker. This one says, "Write your name on your lunch, pop, etc."



You guess it makes sense, but you won't do it. You know what food is yours. Besides, who wants to eat dirty lettuce and radishes? You reach for the handle of the fridge and see another VERY LARGE letter:



Drat! So you DID eat someone's lunch two weeks ago. But you left your lunch there as a replacement. You thought they were close enough in style. Chicken Lean Pocket with carrots vs. Chicken Lean Pocket without carrots. Who pays that close of attention anymore?

You get what you need from the fridge, and head back to your desk. Upon leaving the breakroom, you see another note on the breakroom side of the door. Then another message on the outside of the door.



You find it very odd that someone is that bent on stealing 2-year old magazines from your office, but whatever. Next thing you know, there will be notes on the towel dispenser in the ladies restroom that says 'for personal hygeine issues, only'.

Now, honestly, who talks to their employees by leaving little notes all over the office? This is five new notes in one day.

However, the root of all the new notes is even more disquieting. Why my employer wouldn't let us know (either in meeting or in email) is beyond me, but there is someone coming into my building, eating and drinking some random food from the fridge, reading magazines, using the internet, and checking out the storage closets.

This goes along with a little fecal gift left in one of the department vans. NO! It wasn't me! Stop looking at me that way! I mean, I don't like my employer, but I know where the bathroom is and how to use the toilet. Pooping in someone's van is just wrong and hurts the wrong people.

So, all these incidents combined and still my employer chooses to let everyone know by note instead of by email or meeting. I'd think some B&E would warrant (pun! HA!) a bit of an investigation. And the fact that it's happening in broad daylight. Not cool.

How do you appease the unappeasable?

Is that a word? Unappeasable?

I'm certain now that this book catalog shall be the death of me. Previous versions of the book catalog were rough, no doubt. But that was mostly due to Quark 6 crashing, adding pages, and generally destroying the file. This time around they're just nitpicking the hell out of everything. Out of WHITE SPACE, for heaven's sake!! WHITE SPACE!! WHO COMPLAINS ABOUT WHITE SPACE.

What I believe has happen is that I have done the impossible and made a perfect book catalog. Aside from the obvious 2-color inside, the book catalog is now perfect. The template is seamless and the powers-that-be cannot handle such perfection. They must find the flaw! So, it's white space. Before white space it was font size (at 12pt, mind you) but then they realized they had no verifiable case with font size, so they moved on to white space. Before font size, it was the lack of brand identity on the cover (which was there 3 times, but they made it an even 4.)

So, an inch of white space, occuring once every third column or so, is a major design flaw. In fact, I quote carol:
"The design and uneven amt of copy for the books creates a lot of trapped white space. This is a real design problem."

Did you catch that? A real design problem. As opposed to all those fake design problems she's been having me fix over the years. Well, CAROL, show me a way to make all the chapters and book descriptions for our craptacular, ugly-as-hell books the same length and I'll make them even.

*sigh* I will make it to August first without going grey, mark my word.

I don't know what it is about books...

But apparently managment thinks people are horribly stupid when it comes to books. Not only do you have to have pictures of books as well as a large heading saying "BOOK CATALOG", but you also need to brand ICE 4-times as much as you would ever need to on any other product we promote. Why? Because they're insane.

On both the first and second version above, management said they couldn't tell that this piece was ICE's product because it 'looks so different'. News flash, folks. The catalog ALWAYS looks different because you ALWAYS hate last year's catalog.

Out of the 7 different snippets of information on the cover, 4 of them have an ICE reference (under 'Order a book today!' is the web & phone info with ICE name) --one of them has two references in one! Yay!

There's nothing like OVER branding your product. Please, can you put our name on there again? I can't tell that this is ICE's product. The third version, as viewed above, is the book catalog in 1st draft. I'm expecting it to change a few more times in the next two drafts. Wish me luck!