We need to have a talk.

Step-on-me walks, no, barges into our office (per usual, but this time heavy on the barging), closes the door and says, “We need to have a talk.”

The brief lecture goes something like this, “I know you guys are short staffed and we’ve got a lot of work to do, but you’re making too many mistakes and your designs are wrong. There are errors all over the schedule of this brochure and the flyers look like crap. I want to see all drafts before they go into final draft from now on. Now I know that S3 isn’t doing her job and letting you know when the schedule has changed, but stuff like this shouldn’t happen. You’re slipping.”

I'm slipping?? I work under an insane person and I'm slipping??
Blah-blah-blah. I start to tune her out. I think every third word made it to my brain. I tend to tune out people when they blame me for things I can’t control. Sure, if she wants to revise the drafting process, more power to her. All I know is that when that brochure went into 1st draft, I proofed the damn thing and it matched the schedule perfectly. Now if there was some other way to get the schedule without sitting around for 20 minutes for the thing to print, I’d be more than happy to proof it between drafts. It’s just going to take longer for the pieces to be printed.

So now, in addition to the 1-20 odd drafts that she wants to see BEFORE the thing goes to print, now she wants to see interim drafts in-between drafts. She’s such a micromanaging jackass.

As for the flyers, Clark was working on them from TEMPLATES. Templates are pre-designed and you just paste in the content. There were no errors to the content, but Step-on-me was changing shit left & right on the template--stuff that was designed to stay the same. So Clark makes those changes, then in Final draft, Step-on-me makes even MORE template changes and yells at Clark for not changing them in the first place.

Clark, being entirely fed up with the whole building, walks over to Step-on-me’s office and says that she made the changes in the first place and these are NEW changes. Clark can’t possibly have precog abilities to anticipate the crazy shit Step-on-me comes up with every damn day. NOBODY can do that.

After much venting through IM, I whipped out my Step-on-me voodoo doll I created a few weeks ago and pushed some pins in its head and dominant mouse-hand. I’m still waiting for results.  

Reorganization is a game we like to play

I daresay I can recall just how many times ICE has reorganized in the past few years. It’s a lot, a lot more than the company would care to acknowledge. The records for reorganization must be stored in the same file as the ICE turnover rates. Then when you ask them about their alarming rates, they brush it off like it’s completely normal to have a 50% turnover rate or 3 reorganizations a year.

COMPLETELY NORMAL, and don’t you dare disagree with me…

So! It’s, like, so much fun, because, like, this time, we’re relocating offices, too! Yay! Everyone should be so fortunate. Totally.

I’m trying to take a wild guess as to how long this reorganization will last. The odd bit is that certain staff with crazy-long seniority, staff that have never been managed are now getting managed by people with less experience and less seniority. It’s not that these people need to be managed, really, it’s just that ICE thinks that they need about 5-6 more managers in the building.

Oh, and did I mention that Gonzo is now a director? You have no idea how fantastic this is. This is the same guy that was in my office not two years ago whining about how he dropped a box on his toe. And when I say whining, I mean WHINING to the point that the current marketing manager yelled at him. He’s a director. This place is so messed up.

I figure it has to be self promotion. The people that toot their own horns, exclaim their greatness, and pass off failures to others. These people get crazy promotions. While those who sit and growl and blog, we get insults and a smaller office.

I cant represent 'intellectual' without using 4-color

Amazingly enough, I was the primary candidate for the Graphic Designer position at ICE and I got the title without having to go through a multitude of interviews. Finally, some sense in all this madness!  Apparently, even Carol thought I was competent enough to do the job I already do. It’s really a miracle. Really.

However, I shan’t let this brief shining ray of hope discourage my real goal of finding an actual job that doesn’t eat my soul. It’s always a good thing, finding that type of job—and having it with a company that isn’t going to belly-up on me.

After the holidays passed, Step-on-me decided that our workload was too much (yeah, thanks for pitching in right AFTER the rush season. Where were you then? Oh yeah, on vacation) and began picking up a few projects here and there.

Really, having Step-on-me pick up a few side projects does not help at all, because:

1. She’s never taken any design, advertising, or marketing classes.


2. Her spatial relations suck.


3. She hides things (words, graphics, lines) under white boxes instead of deleting them.


4. She doesn’t know squat about prepress.


5. My eyes bleed when I look at her final product.

This being said, she decided to pick-up a brochure I was working on and help me out by doing the draft changes. Nice? No. I spent about two days fixing her mistakes, lining up text and boxes and paragraphs, fixing typos and leading and kerning, and basically scrapping everything she did and repasting it all into a master page. What should have taken me two hours (if I had done the draft changes) ended up taking me two days.

If that wasn’t bad enough, she keeps picking up all the new/fun (or what could be best described as least-painful) projects and leaving us with all the data entry crap. Then, because she cannot (for the life of her) figure out how to represent “intellectual” as a theme for a brochure in 2-color, she persuades the CEO-lady to let her do it in 4-color. The worst part is, she’s using images that are more fitting with “technology” (ie, binary code, motherboards, computers). Not to say that technology doesn’t require intellect, but rather that intellect doesn’t require technology. You know if I tried pulling that shit, I wouldn't get a raise next year.

And don’t even get me started on how we now HAVE to use a certain process (that’s supposed to save us hours of work, but instead is creating hours MORE of work) because somebody spent time on that process to get it set up for us. Well, hell. I’d be more than happy to use that process if it DID work, but it doesn’t. So I’m not going to waste an extra 3 hours a day just because somebody wasted their time on a process that doesn’t work.

Ugh.

Attire by Step-on-me

In addition to my usual “ignore Step” and “doodle pictures on handouts” mood in this morning’s meeting, I also found myself jotting notes. I had to cover them up with a sticky so as to not appear too suspicious.

My notes:

Talking 24/7

I think it’s cute you think I’m interested

“What is this,” you ask? Why, these are captions to two teeshirts that Step-on-me purchased from “Ambercrombie.” She went on to add that, she agreed that “Ambercrombie’s” clothes run small and that’s why she purchased her niece size XL for Christmas. However, Step-on-me wears the “Ambercrombie” jeans and tee-shirts. She fits into a size SMALL tee-shirt, because it’s okay if she flashes some skin and they’re supposed to fit tight.

*SPEW*

I don’t even want to EVER think about catching a glimpse of Step-on-me’s stomach, especially when she’s talking about it while sniffling, coughing, and blowing her nose.

What’s really funny is the look on the OTHER girl’s (of the Sales Department at ICE) face who shops at Abercrombie. She started out the conversation saying that she likes Abercrombie, but that she has to buy an XL when she shops there. I think this is the first time the other girl has experienced such a reaction from Step-on-me’s blatant “I’m Better Than You” rants. Amazing thing is, the person Step-on-me is discrediting is the same size as Step-on-me.

And so the discontent begins…

Return of the Step-on-me

After being Step-free for over two week, she returns a few days after the New Year. I’m trying my best to ignore her in the usual hour-long morning meeting where the sales department eggs her on just so that they don’t have to go to work. I don’t think Step has caught onto the fact that they ask her a million questions about her personal life just so they don’t have to answer their telephones. I’m not going to be the one to spoil their fun; however, I don’t want to listen to her nonsense either. So, being the rude person that I am in the morning personal-section of the meeting, I turn to my computer and work while they chat.

I’m very tempted to open up monster.com to look for new jobs as Step-on-me beings talking about her SPECTACULAR break. She bought a new Mac, a new printer, a new scanner, a wireless inferface, an iPod, a new phone, a network, a bunch of organization furniture and tubs and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah… She says how she really NEEDED a new computer, because her old one was 5 years old.

I reflect on my current computer, who just hit six years. He’s running fairly well at 6. Sure, he needs some more RAM and a better processor, but he’s chugging along fairly well. We just bought him a 17” flat screen, because the 15” CRT was going to break the desk’s monitor shelf. Maybe someday I’ll be able to upgrade his memory, but I probably won’t be able to buy a new computer for a few more months—if not years. I’m still trying to pay off that lawn mower…

And then she goes on to say how that she LOVES her new phone and how it syncs with her computer and her iPod and there’s SO MUCH music out there she doesn’t have and she’s been downloading stuff like crazy, so much so that she had to limit herself to $10 of music purchases a month (which we all know she’ll break that promise by next week).

Now I’m reflecting on my mattress. A hand-me-down, I’ve approximated its age to be around 15 years. I need to buy a new mattress with my Christmas money. I’d like to have a headboard, but that’ll probably come next year. Hell, I’d really like to have a larger bathroom, a garage, and another bedroom in my small house, but what we really need is a mattress…

Oh and she starts on her husband. I don’t think a single morning meeting has passed without Step-on-me complaining about her husband. He only has to work 6 hours a day and he makes WAY more money than her. She’s so jealous of him. He gets to go to Florida for work. She starts about how her husband’s boss got in trouble because he didn’t spend enough money on the holiday party. How he was saying the people weren’t having enough fun and they needed to drink more and the bill wasn’t expensive enough.

The sales department is soaking this all up like a sponge. Step-on-me mentions how she thinks that ICE should pay for all of their employees to go on a trip to Florida. I think this is a fantastic joke and blurt out a sharp “HA!” It’s not a joke. What the hell are these people on? I go back to work.

I’m in pain just listening to her gush about her fantastic life. I can feel Clark grimacing behind me. Does Step-on-me actually think we live vicariously through her? Oh these poor pathetic employees of mine. My subjects… they make nary half of my paycheck and they couldn’t even dream of having as much money as I do. I get free stuff all the time because I’m far more fortunate, but still life isn’t good enough for me. I must have more. More. More. More.

Somebody shoot me, please.

I found myself smiling as she recounted her “horrid” illness that she’s had for a week. She just wanted to die. I’m smiling. The sales department gives the appropriate, “Oh no! You don’t want that,” but I’m smiling. I feel like giving a nice long evil laugh.

Did I mention that she still doesn’t have me as her top candidate for the Graphic Designer position, even though the job description looks just like my resume? Yeah.

Dark side, here I come.