You can't say I didn't try to warn you...

Here at ICE we had an interview today with the potential Graphic Artist. Which, (on a tangent) I thought would work collaboratively with my position. However, he says that he would be following my lead. Which is odd because I'm almost certain he's going to make more money than me.

Tinkerbell tried to lead the conversation

I had a predetermined set of questions that I was going to use to deter the previous interviewee. However, the previous interviewee caught onto Stepzilla's evil vibes and decided to escape unscathed.

My questions include important things like:

1. Who do you want to win the SuperBowl?
2. What Simpsons character do you most closely relate yourself to?
3. Have you ever worked with micromanagers before?
4. How comfortable are you with making decisions based on limited information?
5. What is your experience working with print?
6. Are you comfortable explaining your work?
7. What's the average amount of projects you're comfortable handling during a given week?

I'm going to interpret his answers as desperate. I would say he was horribly stubborn, but then I would think that even a stubborn person would have got the point.

Shortly after the interview, we received an email from the interviewee. I think I'll call him Hasselhoff.

---------

Sharpie, Colormist, and Tinkerbell:

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed meeting the three of you today. I appreciate your candor, but nevertheless remain very interested in the position. Despite nearly everything Tinkerbell said, it is obvious that you enjoy yourselves at work. I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to work with the three of you.

Peyton Manning once said, "Some guys need to see things on a grease board--I like when you can see it in your mind." Of course, that quote has no relevance here. Instead, it is a transparent attempt to win favor. I hope it works.

Thanks again,

Hasselhoff

To which I replied:

Hasselhoff,

After interviewing with you and mentioning your internet-life, I realized (given your reaction) that I should instantly go through and make sure there was nothing equally as embarrassing in direct connection to my name. I wasn’t going to mention the whole “Fark-thing”, but Sharpie’s a bit bolder than I am. Let’s just say, if you happen to stumble upon my voodoo website, I will deny everything.

That being said, Sharpie and I both highly enjoyed the mention of Peyton Manning—though we had no real idea as to what he was exactly talking about. We’re contemplating putting a life-sized shrine up in our office—at least until he wins the Superbowl. I’m sure you won’t mind.

And the down-low, which (I can tell) is what you’re really looking for in this email. Everybody likes you. We don’t really want to interview anybody else. More or less, I just want to stop doing web work and you seem quite persistent—even with my leading questions. Sharpie and I were considering writing on the back of our notes, “Get out while you still can!” and/or “Run AWAY! Quick!” However, I can see that even these futile attempts would not deter you. You are very steadfast and brave, akin to Ash on Army of Darkness. You have placed certainty in all of our minds that you will be able to handle the daunting task ahead.

You can’t say we didn’t warn you.

*Colormist

To manage the manager

Sharpie had her weekly meeting with Stepzilla. She calls it her Micromanagement meeting. In this meeting, Stepzilla confronted Sharpie about not letting Stepzilla know about drafts that Sharpie needed her to proof. It had been in Stepzilla’s inbox for five days.

Stepzilla: “You need to let me know when I have something you need.”

Sharpie: “I did. I told you.”

Stepzilla: “But you need to tell me if I forget.”

Sharpie: “I did. I told you every morning that I needed it.”

Stepzilla: “But you really need to corner me and force me to do it or I’m not going to do it.”

Stepzilla: “I need it to the printer by next week, but let me see it again after you make the changes.”

(I'm not even going to say how impossible she's making our job--especially when she takes one week to do something that only takes us one hour.)

Great, so now we have to micromanage our micromanager so that she does the work she’s supposed to do so that we can do our work. I think this comes after her meeting with the Skeksi because she wants us to mess up. If we do mess up, regardless of whether or not it’s Stepzilla’s fault and not our own, Stepzilla will then be able to continue micromanaging us like she always has.

TOP 10: “Favorite” Noises Overheard in the Sales Office

1. Any speak of Haute Couture from people who are more than a few pounds over weight who have no fashion sense to speak of. (i.e. Crocs, neon hot pant-capris, Hawaiian shirts)
   
   
2. Light-rock radio stations
   
   
3. Valley girl speak
   
   
4. Lengthy personal calls, which are VERY personal
   
   
5. The fax machine—especially when it announces, “your call cannot be completed as dialed, please hang up and try your call again” (repeated)
   
   
6. Name pronouncing (repeated)
   
   
7. Name spelling (repeated)
   
   
8. The Fray’s How to Save a Life (played no less than 5 times a day for the past two months)
   
   
9. Sales person talking on the phone while eating
   
   
10. Speaker phone busy signal for five minutes
    

You neglected to mention…

We returned from winter break to the sad news that our sales lady’s mom is in a bad way. Stepzilla didn’t expect it to be a positive outcome. The sales lady misses the first week of January. The week passes and we don’t hear any news about her. Another person in our department decides to call her and see how her mom is doing:

1 – “Hey, how’s your mom doing?”

2 – “Stepzilla didn’t tell you?”

1 – “Tell me what?”

2 – “My mom died. I told Carol and she said she’d tell Stepzilla…”

(Hold on a second, I have to shoot a rubber band at a sales person for having an extensively personal and lengthy phone conversation with her friend.)

Stepzilla is confronted in our morning meeting about the sales lady’s mom. She brushes it off like it’s no big deal, asks what type of time off the sales lady will be taking, and how long she’ll be gone. Totally callous.

Stepzilla tells Sharpie to add a picture of a family on the cover of a brochure. So she finds a picture of a family with two kids and puts it on the cover. Stepzilla returns it to her and says to just put a picture of a couple on the cover—that she doesn’t want to give the impression that the place is overrun with kids.

Stepzilla doesn’t have kids and frequently boasts about how much she hates them.

Our department ordered noise-cancelling headphones back mid-December. We need them because, at times, the sales ladies are overly talkative (not necessarily about work related activities, either) and we need to concentrate. We’ve been wondering where they were for about a week now, but I was giving some leeway for the holiday shipping craze.

Finally today (tired of the headaches from non-stop chatter), I ask CEO-Lady’s secretary where the headphones are:

“Hi! Would you happen to know when we should expect those headphones we ordered to arrive?”

“What headphones?” (granted, she is known to be fairly dense, but I didn’t expect her to forget this easily)

“The noise-cancelling ones?” (I pantomime large headphones on my ears.)

“Oh! Yeah. Nobody told you? Carol told me not to order them and she’s looking for another solution. You should talk to Stepzilla.”

“Ohhh-kayyy, thanks.”

So, in the meantime, I’ll be blasting my iPod at full volume and damaging my hearing because Carol’s looking for another solution. I know the headphones were a tad expensive, but expenses have never been a problem before.

I let Sharpie know about our “not going to be arriving” headphones. We corner Stepzilla in our morning meeting. It was clearly another thing that she was delaying telling us. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s being passive aggressive about the whole no-vacation thing from last month.

Stepzilla acts like she doesn’t know what we’re talking about when we bring it up, then blows it off like it’s no big deal. Apparently Carol was more concerned that it was a bigger issue and that what we really needed was to move, in the summer, six months from now. So that’s why she didn’t order them.

She’d much rather we suffer for six months, wade through another move, and end up with shittier offices, than have the problem fixed right away.

While she’s explaining why we won’t be getting any headphones, I butt in and ask, “So then, should we just go out and buy our OWN headphones?”

Stepzilla clarifies that we are not to buy our own headphones; that, rather, we either choose to have a new office or get headphones. She’s pressing us to decide and I make a point to say that we really need to think it over first. I was hoping she’d leave, but she doesn’t. She continues hovering until we decide that headphones NOW are better than a move six months from now.

Since Stepzilla has chosen to be horribly passive aggressive, I can almost guarantee that she hasn’t let Carol know that we’ve chosen headphones over a new office.

Sharpie has an impromptu meeting with Carol the Skeksi

Sharpie was getting pretty unnerved about the whole vacation situation with Stepzilla. She had emailed Carol to request an urgent meeting, but Carol hadn’t replied to her yet. My carpal tunnel was acting up again, and I knew how concerned Carol tended to be with workplace injuries, so I drug Carol down to our office to check out my workstation. Carol rips off the wrist-rest (which I could have done if I had known it was okay to damage my new office supplies).

As Carol’s leaving, she asks Sharpie about the meeting. Sharpie’s looking pretty frazzled. Carol picks up on the cue of “disgruntled employee.” The next thing you know, they’re in a meeting together. Sharpie reinforces the fact that we work in a hostile work environment and are afraid to even speak up about Stepzilla—for fear of retribution. Carol promises change and that she’s actually going to do something. She tells Sharpie that she’s to go on her vacation. Carol also asks about if the department being short one person is causing the work overload.

You think?!

After Sharpie’s meeting is over, we notice that Carol is in Stepzilla’s office and talking to her. The next day they have another, even longer meeting. Then Stepzilla is calling people for interviews; talking to Mavvy about candidates taking a sample test; and generally being much more appeasing. She really has backed off of Sharpie.

A month later, we still don’t have a multimedia person, but apparently we have a candidate. I think this position has been open for a year…