Battleship Gray

So, the interview at the new place went well (as far as I can tell).
It's a company that makes kitchen equipment (that's probably too specific, but I do it because I love you).
The company is located in an industrial park and is part office, part warehouse. They seem to be doing well, but from the looks of the building you really wouldn't know it.

I waited in the lobby for my appointment and stared at some old posters and catalog covers of years gone by. When my interviewer greets me, he takes me through the field of cubicles.
It's not an inspiring atmosphere. It's like that 1984 apple commercial (watch it here).

I don't know who first thought of this gray cubicle idea, but I'm betting it's the same bastard that thought we should work 5 days a week and have off only 2. You want an idea for a new company? Start selling cubicles that come in more colors than just the standard Battleship Gray. It doesn't need to look like a unicorn farted rainbows in the office, but a little bit of life would improve anyone's morale.

Anyway, I sat in the conference room for more than an hour and discussed the vision of the company, my potential role, and hockey. So, all-in-all, it went well.
I should know by Friday or Monday whether or not I'll have to start coming up with all new aliases for this here blog.

You Can't Bring Me Down

Today is my 80's montage of putting together a portfolio, dusting off the suit and practicing my call-out burst designs to the tune of Bob Seger.
I'm fortunate to have a large collective of friends/associates in the design industry. I'm also fortunate that many of them are extending a helping hand in finding me some work (freelance mostly, but it's all positive in my book).

Sleep was hard to come by last night. Worrying about my interview (tomorrow), trying to line up something else if that interview doesn't work out, but mostly about whether or not I'll receive my last due paycheck from Jackass Inc.

I've gone over the scenario a thousand times in my head and almost never do I just get my check and go on my merry way. Carl is notorious for not paying his bills (and being slimier than anything Andrew Zimmern has ever eaten). I'm hoping that my awareness of his crooked ways, before I even started working there, has helped me build up enough dirt on him. I should be able to get my money by merely suggesting I mention any number of this bafoon's bullshit actions to the proper authorities.
It would be nice if it didn't have to get to that, but I really think it will.
I haven't seen his awful-club-shirt-wearing-cause-that-makes-me-creative, snaggletoothed grin in 24 hours and I still hate him.

Happy Valentine's Day... Now Get Out!

Today at Jackass Inc, Stoner and Carl both came over to my desk in the morning to deliver the bad news.
There hasn't been enough design work coming in and they had to lay me off.
It's all of the emotions in a split second: Fear, Anger, Bitterness, Joy, Acceptance, Resentment, Panic, and a few others I'm sure.
In my mind I kept thinking "Why couldn't you have waited another week or two? By that time I would have gone to my interview on Wednesday and might have possibly accepted a new position".

But now I get to worry if they'll give me my last paycheck (which they owe me this Friday and I fully plan on going in to pick up... just to make sure of it).

I also get to worry if Carl will fight the unemployment (as he's been known to do).

I laughed as Carl kept saying things like he would give me a referral or that if I brought him a print job he'd give me an 8% commission on the job. Knowing that he had made similar offers to people I've worked with only to never pay them a cent, I had to smirk.

Through the painful morning Stoner seemed to actually show remorse. He told me that I was the best thing that happened to his design group, that I was the best designer he's had in there and that we worked well together. Apparently, he had been taking smaller paychecks to make sure that I was paid. Who knows how much of it was true, but he seemed genuine. I don't hate Stoner. He's just a dumb guy.

I do hate Carl & Connie though. Those two are a rare kind of retarded evil. Ones with horned safety helmets and winged-seeing-eye-monkeys. Those two are due to get their butts reamed by the hounds of Karma.

So, I guess most of this blog's entertainment will be different from here on out.
But don't worry. I have a knack for finding horrible design jobs with horrible people.

Half Day Friday

Normally, a proposed half day Friday would sound glorious to me, but now that I'm hourly it means Carl and Stoner are shorting me on my 40 hours. So, it took them exactly one month for the hourly thing to cost me money.

I hate them.

Those cheap bastards.

I don't know about you, but I need 100% of my weekly salary. It's not like they pay me so well here that I have all this room to spare with paying the bills and living a life. 

I don't have much funny to offer today...and I have to leave the office in a few minutes. Sorry about that.

Have a good weekend and be thankful you don't work here.

Toy Fair Crunch

Every February the Toy Fair is held in New York City. It's usually held at the Javits Center (a really big friggin convention center). The event is for toy makers off all sizes, to present their new toys for the upcoming season. Mattel, Hasbro, Lego, and just about every toy company you can think of has a booth there. Be on the lookout early next week for all of the reports from the convention featuring hot new items that reporters like (and rarely predict which ones will be successful). David Lettermen usually has someone on to showcase a bunch of items, that Dave does his best to damage in many colorful ways.

Every year the week before Toy Fair is busy for those of us in the package design business. It's usually a good thing for the cash flow and a bad thing for those of us who enjoy sleep. It never fails that companies have last minute changes to packages and they must be made only days before the show. C'mon, they only had a year to get this stuff figured out!

So, last night after I left work, I get a call from Stoner saying we have an emergency for the morning... a package redesign. No problem. I'm used to it. I come in early to tackle it.

The part that sucks is that I have a couple of hours to redo this package, that the client apparently had their color-blind cat create, and then I get Connie and Carl coming in every 30 minutes to check on my progress.

Quick Tip: If you'd like to anger me in the quickest way possible, watch over my shoulder as I work and ask me what I'm doing and when it'll be done.

I spent the morning making a presentable version of this package. The original had rainbow type, white type with a white glow, random branding shapes, and lots of misspellings.

Mini Lesson: Rainbows are bad! Rainbow type is really bad! Let me explain why. The designer's job is to control the eye so that the consumer can easily understand what the product is and who it's for. Any text should be easy to read and should follow a hierarchy of most important message to secondary and tertiary messages.

A rainbow contains all of the colors, therefore making it nigh impossible to control the consumer's eye... and it's gay.

So, after I finished with the redesign, submitted it and took 5 seconds to breathe we heard back from the client. They said they liked what we did and would have their designer incorporate elements of our design into theirs.

I hope that before they continue the client at least keeps their designer away from the catnip. That stuff is powerful.

Time Check

Since our recent conversion from a salary based pay system to the hourly based pay, Stoner has had me either clock him in or out almost everyday. That's because I'm always here before him and usually here later than him... and he'd still like to get his full paycheck every week.

I'm ok with it. I figure sometime in the future, if I need him to return the favor he'd have to agree to it. Although I admit it's wrong and I feel a little dirty for doing it. It's kinda like siding with Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters to squeeze a little more cash out of the Emperor. The lesser of two evils.

Not sure if I've ever explained the convoluted hierarchy here, but I'll try.

Stoner used to be a designer for Carl here years ago. Then Carl decided that he wanted to sell the design as separate service. He also didn't want to have a conflict of interest with some clients (design agencies) so, Carl created the design part as a separate entity...but not really.

The design part does have a different logo & letterhead, with Stoner in place as the "owner", but Carl's company does all of the paperwork (aside from a few invoices/proposals that Stoner usually has me do). Stoner gets his paychecks from Carl. There is no way Stoner would have his own company if it completely depended on him doing all of that work.

And so, with the new hourly system in place Stoner now bills Carl for the hours he's not here by having me clock him in and out.

It's a greasy game of naked Twister with your cousins here. It's all kinds of wrong and someone's always getting screwed.

More Daily Chores

When I come into work here, I have a swipe card to get into the door. I have to swipe to leave also or else the security system won't let me back in. My theory is that the system has two purposes. One, to keep people who don't work here out and two, to track the time of the people that do work here.

I then have to clock into a timesheet program with an ID number. In that program I must log into a job or else I'm not really at work (according to payroll). I also have to fill-out my name (even though everyone has their own ID number that they must use to log in to begin with) and the kind of work I am doing ie: Polishing 10lbs of shite and then stuffing it into a 5lb rainbow adorned box.

Next I do the design work and print it out for review by Stoner, Connie or Carl...or if I'm lucky all three! Once revisions are made, I send them JPEGs of the work to pass along to the client (because I can't be trusted with client contacts. Part of Carl's paranoia).  I have had my own clients at other jobs. Clients bigger than any of the ones they deal with here. And maybe to Carl's point, I do some freelance on my own for some of my previous clients.

After the many rounds of revisions, I am to print out copies of the work I've done. These are suppose to go into a job folder and then used for billing. I usually end up printing out the same things again, because someone misplaced the first print outs or the entire job folder.

Now, I understand that to make money you must track your work and for design you should track every round of revisions, but doesn't there seem to be more than one redundancy in this process? I've never had to do so much to justify the work I've done. The closest I've come to it was when I worked for one of the two big toy companies. But that was due to me being an independent contractor more than anything else.

Please share your time tracking duties. Be they small or be they mighty? Let me know if I'm just whining.

Herb, Clean up in Aisle Four!

One of a million things that bugs me about how they do their day-to-day business here at Jackass Inc., is the phone system. You know how in most environments if you dial a coworker's extension, it'll ring their phone and your extension and name (or something close to it) will come up? Well, here it just goes to speaker phone. So if someone wants to call and talk to me I get a beep and then them talking. No call ID and most times not enough time for me to get my headphones off before they start their conversation. Also, there are no real walls here so if someone is talking to Stoner I hear the whole conversation. The whole process just seems rude to me. Perhaps I'm just old fashion that way.

On a similar note, we have a warehouse here and people may not be at their desk. So, often times people are paged over the loudspeaker. Nothing out of the ordinary really. It's just that when Connie does it she sounds as if you should be at your desk and if you don't answer the first page within 10 seconds you get another page of disgust. Seriously, when Connie was a child someone pissed in her Cheerios and she's never gotten over it.

My favorite is when Carl pages someone. He stumbles through it every time. Like half way through he forgets his extension and then when he repeats his page (it is unwritten law that you must always repeat a page), he stumbles again.

Last little nugget for the day.

Rumor has it that Connie is leaving. I don't know where or when or any other details, but it's a little scary to me. I dislike her strongly, but once in a while she'll defend my comments in a meeting, because she has a bit of an education... she's still a grand bitch, but she knows the English language better than these jelly-brained baboons.

Define the word "the"

Off and on for the last month or so, I've been designing an in-store display that will be used to sell gift cards. Once again, I'll try to describe things without giving away too many specifics. The system is suppose to work like this: You see the display in-store, the display has a number of cards on it each relating to a different item, you pick one, take it to the cashier, pay for the card, when you get home you go online to fill out your info and in about a week you get your customized item.

It's not a complicated system really. Especially, if you've ever bought a gift card and used it (as I'm sure most of you have). My problems surfaced yesterday when Carl returned from his vacation and had gone a whole week without getting his troll thumbprints on any artwork. Carl is like that cat you have that even after you give him his own space, have him neutered, and separate him from other animals he still pisses on everything.

So, the client wanted us to come up with a header for this display that had a 1-2-3 step process clearly and simply defined. While Carl was away I wrote the copy. I came up with some rough wording with the understanding that the client may want to change it up a bit...but it should get me in the ball park.

Then Carl comes into my office at the end of the day and has me pull up the file on my monitor so that he can work with it through me (and I just love being Bonzo's puppet!).

What I had was:

1. Select the Card with the "Item" you like.

2. Purchase card in-store to activate.

3. Go online to fill out your info and redeem your card.

Carl, tried to re-word all of it one line at a time. He would say the same thing I had but add another sentence or two. After 20 minutes, I got him to leave the first 2 steps alone. By that time, I just wanted to go home.

For the third step he says, "What does redeem mean?"

I say, "You know, after you buy a gift card, you redeem it online...use it to buy something."

Carl, "Yeah, but do people know what the word redeem means?"

Me, "I think most people have used a gift card and they ALL say 'Redeem" it on the card somewhere."

Carl, "Yeah, I don't know".

A few minutes of this circular conversation, where I'm sure I suffered some kind of head trauma, and I just let him re-write step 3.

It now reads:

3. Go online to enter your custom "item" information. Redeem your card and your "item" will be delivered to your home in 7-10 days.

I suggested that we add "Sit down at your computer" at the beginning of step 3, but the idea was shot down.

Pass it on.

Just made it.

Sorry. Not much for funny stories today. Once in a while this place gets busy and I don't get much of a break. The good news is I had to secret phone calls today (3 if you count a call to a company I already do freelance for...shhhh). The other 2 were for potential positions at companies that aren't this tornado of twits called Jackass Inc. One of my secret phone calls was in my car parked a good 15 minutes away from this building. The other was unscheduled and I decided to make that in the bathroom...It's just a single stall. So, no chance of an awkward-overheard-conversation-after-the-flush scene
I'm excited by the possibility of having healthcare again. I can't wait to go to the dentist! Sad huh?
I'm excited by the possibility of having a 401k in place.
I'm excited by the possibility of having never to see Carl and Connie's troll faces (which are tanned right now as they just got back from their vacation).

I imagine if such possibilities come to fruition this blog will be a little different.
Don't worry. I've got an idea or two.

ahhhh... tomorrow is Friday.
I'm sure I'll have something to be angry about by then.
Later.

I'm Surrounded by A$$h@les!

When I started here at Jackass Inc., I was given a used work area and a used machine. Which is what I've had at most jobs. It's pretty rare (at least in my experience) to walk into a place that has purchased new equipment just for you. 

So, as I worked I found preferences set in the software that I end up changing to my liking. Again, no biggie. A few days into it, the software update jumps up and tells me I have updates I can install. It didn't look like anything important so I let it go.

A week or so later it popped up again and this time it was security updates and some other things that looked important. I clicked "OK" and only made it to the prompt of user password. I looked around the desk (which still had plenty of papers strewn about it from the last sucker) looking for a post-it or something that looked like it would have the password written down. To no avail. Nothing I found worked.

Another day or so went by and I decided to try a couple of random passwords. Things like the company name, owner's name, department names, previous employee names... nothing worked. Now, by this time, I had been here long enough to know that most everyone here was an idiot. I then thought of the movie Spaceballs and the scene regarding the security code. You know where the code ends up being 1-2-3-4-5? Then Rick Moranis says, "1-2-3-4-5? That's the stupidest combination I ever heard in my life! That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!". I tried the security code of 1-2-3-4-5 on my machine, laughing to myself as I did...and it worked.

I thought it was funny so I told "Matt" about it. To which Matt replied, "yeah, that's the code for all the machines here. Genius right?"

Genius indeed!

A Gun!?

Let me apologize now, this post will probably be less filled with funny and more filled with rage.

The f@#king mongoloid Carl Jr., walked into our design office today with a gun. A honest to goodness hand gun. Apparently, he bought this replica of some early 1900's revolver and wanted to show it to everyone. Carl Jr. shows Stoner and they talk about taking it out back to fire it or maybe the gun range. In the process he and Stoner are taking turns spinning the chamber and practicing their stance like their in some damn western. Stoner even cocks the hammer and asks, "It's not loaded right?" and then dry fires it in my general direction. Not that it would have hit me but it would have hit the wall behind me.

Carl Jr. tells Stoner not to dry fire the weapon because it could damage the weapon.

Then, they both notice that I'm not laughing along and acting like a couple of monkeys with a grapefruit. Carl Jr. says, "I think Designer X is scared".

To which I replied, "Yeah, well, I don't like guns and it's like a bad after school special in here".

Carl Jr. tries to relieve my fears by telling me, "Well, it's not loaded".

My response is, "Yeah, that's exactly what they say in all those specials".

He then tries to tell me why this gun is safe compared to modern day weapons. Which I neither know is true or care. The fact that this retarded gorilla somehow passed any kind of test to own a gun gives me no faith in his knowledge of weapons or the validity of said test. I believe that if you are responsible enough, smart enough, and pass some REAL tests you should be allowed to own a gun.

But the fact that Carl Jr. owns such a weapon tells me that the gun laws in place are not good enough. This half-wit would lose a spelling bee to a fern.

Carl Jr. then comes over to me with the gun and tries to show me how it works.

I tell him, "Look, I don't want to touch it. I don't want it near me. I don't want it in the same f@#king room as me."

Carl Jr. then seems hurt and apologizes for offending me. I tell him that the office in no place for such things. He tries to pass the blame onto Stoner for pulling the trigger. I don't respond. He apologizes again. I don't respond. He finally leaves the room with his new "toy".

un-F#@king-believable.
Please tell your friends about this blog.
Help me get enough traffic to this site so that I might be able to leave this horrid job.