Conniving…

A long-long time ago, back when I was first allowed to touch a design program at ICE, we didn’t have a speaker’s picture for the class. So, instead of just leaving it blank or writing a note, I drew a happy face in the blank space in the design program. It was my placeholder.

When Carol the Skeksi saw the happy face, she flipped out. She said it was disrespectful, I shouldn’t do that, I needed to remove it right away, what if we printed it like that and the speaker saw it?? Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. You know, the usual Carol-freak-out. Of course, while she’s yelling this at me, I’m nodding like it was an honest mistake and she is oh-so-right. At the same time in my head I’m thinking, oh-my-gawd, it was just a smilie face. Go take your Zoloft, lady.

Since that freak-out, instead of drawing the smilie faces in the program, I intentionally draw an entire person in inkpen on her drafts for a placeholder. I’m positive it annoys her, but it’s not like she can complain rationally about it.

The other day, I took my evil connivingness to a whole new level. I like to call it the “Disney Level.”

First, I must show you the back side of the postcard. On the back, it is very simple. You might not be able to tell behind the fuzzy text, but there are leaves in the background. Usually, the case with postcards is that everyone is so preoccupied with one side of the postcard that they COMPLETELY ignore the other side. I didn’t mean for the leaves in the background to be so obnoxious, but apparently they are. So much so that you can’t even read the text that’s on top of them.

I’m not one to love doing text on top of pictures. I get annoyed very easily if the text is even remotely illegible. The leaves here are at 10% opacity. It just annoys the hell out of Stepzilla.

I have gotten into the habit of locking my files that I LIKE because Stepzilla (who is in no way, shape, or form a designer) likes to play around in files when she likes the design. When the files are locked, she has to save a copy of the file and cannot save over the file (well, if she was intelligent, she would know how to unlock a file, but she’s not). When I came back, my postcard was mutilated. Thankfully, when I came back, she happened to be sick. So I “relocated” her file to some unknown destination.

She had taken out all of the leaves except three tiny ones. She left instructions for me to make changes to HER new file and put them into draft. I use the old version and make the changes. I note on the changes that Miss Contrary made some illegible scribble about the leaves. I decided to interpret the scribble to mean “Why only three?” which clearly, “Add More Leaves!”

When Stepzilla notices that the document I’ve passed out is different from her butchered version, she freaks out. Mavvy witnesses her hissing during a meeting, “This isn’t the RIGHT file!” She begins scribbling furiously all over the page and writes “Is this the right file? Too Many Leave! {sic} Please remove from behind book list.”

So, while I have everyone’s focus on my absolute refusal to remove the leaves from the back of the postcard, everyone is completely ignoring the FRONT of the postcard, which is where my evil conniving lays.

Please note the second picture. I’ve highlighted the spectacular feature. When I rendered this tree from a photograph, I thought it looked a little scary. So, in my amusement, I drew an evil face on the scary tree. I’ve been biding my time until Stepzilla (or one of these “oh-so-concerned-about-the-details” lawyers) points out the face—at which time I will feign innocence and act 100% confused and shocked.

When Stepzilla first saw the mockup of this postcard, she commented how she LOVED the tree, how it was a beautiful tree. Everyone in the department knows about the tree. We were trying hard not to burst out laughing.

Stepzilla proofed the postcard and made some comment to Sharpie about “paying attention to the details.” Yeah… she’s right on the ball on this one.

Then, while she’s freaking out about the leaves on the back, she keeps gleaning over the evil face! I thought for SURE someone would spot it by now. It’s not that well hidden. Now that it’s one draft away from the printer, I’m coming to terms with actually LEAVING the evil face on the postcard. I’m sure my printer will notice the face, so I’ll have to warn him not to comment.

It will be my greatest triumph to date…

Oh, I can breathe.

Stepzilla is on a two-week hiatus to Hawaii starting today. I’m just happy she’s going to be half-way to China.

Of course, she’s thinks we’re utterly incompetent without her lecherous self there to guide every comma (before and after the word AND) and paragraph rule (which she STILL doesn’t know how to find in InDesign). We’ve received various emails, post-it notes, meetings, and hand-written lists as to what we’re supposed to be doing. All of them have the same information repeated multiple times. Then, just for good measure, she sends a staff email out letting every manager in the building know every last detail of every single thing we’re doing.

I almost would rather talk to the two people that happen to have a freak-out session and ask us where their brochure is. However, Stepzilla wants to make everyone think she actually knows what’s happening.

When I heard her computer shutting down this afternoon I almost started giggling like it was Christmas morning. It’s the greatest present she could ever give us.

Even more icing on the cake is the fact that I have an interview tomorrow. It just pleases me immensely to know that I might have the opportunity to hand in my resignation letter to Carol the Skeksi while Stepzilla is on vacation. Not only would this ABSOLUTELY ruin her vacation, but my last two weeks at ICE would be Stepzilla-free. It would be fantastic. Just thinking of it gets me all misty-eyed.

My Narcissistic Boss OR How I Realized I Was Sane

While visiting my mother, she happened to make a side comment about how she thought my boss is narcissistic. Curious as to what the tell-tale signs of narcissism were, I googled the disorder and came across this well-organized website devoted to Narcissistic Personality Disorder. http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/index.html

I was surprised by the description on the front page. It seemed similar, but I wanted to read the traits to make sure. There were about 28 traits that were elaborated in detail. Stepzilla fit every damn trait and description on that page.

Of course, it’s hilarious, but equally very sad. Not sad for Stepzilla, but sad for us, the lowly marketing peons situation below her flaming mouth.

I instantly share it with everyone I have contact with that has shared their loathing of Stepzilla. Every person could recall prime examples of nearly every trait. Things that didn’t fit were easily explained by referencing her mother—who we also assume is suffering from the same disorder.

Thankfully we now realize to the full extent what we are dealing with and now have some sort of solace in the fact that we aren’t insane. We, in fact, are NOT doing anything wrong and are actually correct when we think we’re correct. She does nitpick just for the sake of nitpicking and will say anything to bring you down.

This also explains her recent decent behavior towards me. She’s told Mavvy infrequently that she doesn’t want me to leave. So, because I have something over her, she is nice to me so I will stay. Some may think this is a good situation to be in. I don’t care how long I’ve been here or how nice she’s being to me, she’s still pure evil. The fact that I can see right through her sugar-coated ruse just makes me want to leave even more.

In reading the site, I was hoping there might be some sort of solution to the disorder or some way to deal with this personality. The site suggests distance (which is impossible considering she’s right across the hall and spends 9-hours a day in our office) OR we could give her everything she wants whenever she wants it and never ask for any reciprocation at all. Even THINKING about giving such a vile creature any time of ego-fluffing makes me furious, so that is totally out of the question.

A few have suggested that I anonymously leave this on her chair, and perhaps I will when I leave. It won’t help matters any, but it would make me feel better. Maybe even a link to this blog…

Year End Review

Every year at ICE we have these stupid self-reviews we have to type up to set goals for ourselves for the next year. Stepzilla doesn’t care about the reviews. She thinks they’re pointless. I’ve been trying to write my review for weeks, but didn’t get a chance until now (a month late). I was consulting Sharpie what to write about, as I really don’t care. Nor do I have anything I’m actually proud of.

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1. What 2-3 accomplishments are you most proud of this year? • Making a unique Stepzilla voodoo doll for each marketing employee to enact their frustration upon without getting fired.

• Managing my time so that Stepzilla THINKS that I’m being productive or overburdened, while actually just playing games half of the day.

• Pulling in a freelance job so that I can actually make a living wage.

2. What was your biggest challenge this year?

• Not bitch-slapping Stepzilla in the face when she makes some snide sarcastic comment meant to prop herself up further on her non-existent pedestal.

• Not bitch-slapping Stepzilla when she takes credit for all my thankless work in a staff meeting.

• Not bitch-slapping Stepzilla when she turns every point of any conversation toward herself, regardless of how it relates to the current topic.

3. What 1-2 goals would you like to focus on achieving over the next year?

• Finding a new job that will actually pay me a living wage, not charge me for parking, and where the employees don’t piss and moan about piddly shit that shouldn’t be given a half-a-thought.

4. Here are the goals you set for yourself last year - how do you see progress going?

- Learning more about our website structure Integrating XML with Indesign.

• Hell no. I didn’t do shit. I was WAY too preoccupied with training the new staff and doing everyone else’s job except my own! How the HELL do you expect me to work on my “goals” that don’t matter when you pile me under a workload big enough for four people?

5. What changes/improvements would you like to see focused on within the department
that would make work easier (please list in order of importance if you have multiple?)

• I would like to see Stepzilla focused on her own work rather than messing around in my files and making my job 5-times more difficult than it needs to be.

• I would like to see Stepzilla focused on stopping her need to “pre-guess” what people want or DON’T want, so that we don’t have to change a design 5-times when it was right the first time around.

• I would like to see Stepzilla focused on stopping her obsession with putting periods at the end of fragments.

• I would like to see Stepzilla focused on improving her managerial skills so that she doesn’t have 100% employee turnover at the end of every year.

• I would really like to see the department focused on a new manager that had none of Stepzilla’s OCD traits.

Male v. Female Ratio

Last week, one of the IT people stops down to fix our never-ending plethora of computer ailments. The IT person is setting up a computer for the interview testing and asks about the gender of the applicant.

“It’s a guy, right? Please tell me you’re hiring a guy.” (IT)

Let me back up a bit. ICE decided that they needed a full-time web/multimedia designer because I obviously couldn’t do the job of two people. The new designer will handle all the web design work and I have to train them on how to do the work. I also have to oversee their designs to make sure it fits with our general image of the company. The salary range for this position is 10,000 MORE than what I’m making currently.

So, just to clarify: I’m doing this job now and the job that I was hired to do, for 10,000 LESS. They’re hiring someone and paying them 10,000 MORE than me to do HALF of my job.

Why am I getting this odd feeling that I’m being underpaid?

So, back to the IT person:

“Well, a large majority of the people applying for this position are men, so it looks like it’s going to be a guy.” (colormist)

“That’s good. You know, corporate is looking into ICE because all they only hire women. They say it’s unhealthy for the business.”

Sharpie, Mavvy, and the IT person begin discussing the implications of a 90% female driven company, but my mind drifts off.

I begin accessing my stockpile of memorized statistics:

“[A] full-time working men make[s] a dollar for every 76 cents paid to women for the same work.” – John Kerry

Rounding that up to 25% and multiply my salary by 1.25 = 43k, which just happens to be right in that range of the starting salary for the new ICE designer position. Actually, it’s a little low. The starting salary is more like upper-mid 40’s.

ICE is notorious for underpaying their employees. The salary records for the company are public knowledge. If you sort the positions by title, then salary, ICE is always at the bottom. My starting salary was 28k. This new position’s starting salary is 45k.

No WONDER they’re getting more male applicants.

Sorry. Didn’t know you were getting a math lesson today, did you?

The New Marketing Coordinator

ICE hired a new marketing coordinator, Mavvy, to fill Clark’s massive shoes. At first I wasn’t so sure about the new employee. Mainly, my paranoia set in and I began to view him as a spy of Stepzilla. It took Mavvy five weeks to decide to start fishing for information from Sharpie and I about our true relationship with Stepzilla.

We were out at lunch with the sales team. Of course, Stepzilla dominates ALL conversation like she normally does. I mean, if the conversation doesn’t revolve around Stepzilla, then what’s the point, right?

I’m counting the minutes until we can leave. Finally, we depart from the less-than-wonderful restaurant and head back to work. Sharpie and I begin our vague complaints about the lunch conversation and Mavvy speaks up, “Well, if the conversation wasn’t dominated by SOME people.”

“Oh, don’t even get us started on Stepzilla.” —Sharpie.

“And by SOME people, you mean, Stepzilla.” —Colormist.

“She’s a BITCH. She is the most self-absorbed person I have ever met. She's a terrible boss. It's no wonder everyone quits.” —Mavvy.

Within the five minute ride back to the building, we’re all gushing at one another about how much we can’t stand Stepzilla. It’s a passion, apparently shared by all who are immediately under her graces. You can’t help but be abused by Stepzilla. Her feet are far too large for her to even bother to look at who she steps on.

And with 100% turnover, you have to wonder why Carol the Skeksi isn’t looking into Stepzilla’s managerial skills.

When we arrive back to the office, Stepzilla leaves for the afternoon and I sneak over to Sharpie’s desk and start taking photographs of Sharpie’s Voo-doo doll of Carol the Skeksi.

We hadn’t shared the vital information of the Voo-doo dolls to Mavvy yet and he was very interested in what we were giggling about. She walks over, looks at the doll, and says, “Is that someone here?”

We shut the door and nod our heads.

“Is that Carol?”

Instant laughter.

“Oh, that’s not good. That’s not good at ALL. I didn’t think it looked THAT much like Carol. You should probably keep it in a not-too-noticeable location, Sharpie.”

Mavvy then asks if there are more. I show her my Stepzilla doll, but don’t say who it is.

“Is this, Step-on-me?”

Laughter again.

Mavvy adds, “She’s such a bitch.”

Oh my gawd, this office is priceless. Literally. We might be horribly miserable, but at least we’re all miserable together.

random thought

I’m thinking it’s a clear sign that you should be looking for alternate employment when you get excited about an SUV accident during the morning news because it might be your boss.