{"id":46561,"date":"2019-04-25T21:14:46","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T01:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46561"},"modified":"2020-08-10T21:14:59","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T01:14:59","slug":"shop-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46561","title":{"rendered":"Shop talk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-46562 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the_bobs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the_bobs.jpg 510w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/the_bobs-300x181.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">It doesn\u2019t happen, by design, that I talk about my job.\u00a0 Frankly, most of the time it\u2019s nothing particularly interesting, and probably not really any different from anyone else who works a fairly normal corporate job anywhere in the world.\u00a0 But lately, my work has been a little bit more encompassing in my daily life than I\u2019d really like it to, and I feel like I\u2019m in a not-that-great position currently, and I feel like everyone I\u2019d vent to is kind of tired of hearing the same old stories about my job, but I still have a lot of thoughts and words that I\u2019d like to get out of my system, that writing about it, seems like the only viable option in order to accomplish that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Imagine . . .<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">You\u2019re an auto mechanic. You fix cars and motorized vehicles for a living.\u00a0 You use tools and work with your hands in order to fix said vehicles, day in and day out.\u00a0 One day, a chef walks into your shop, and gives you a bunch of forks, spoons and spatulas and tells you, these are your tools now.\u00a0 Please fix my car.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">You\u2019re a chef. You cook food for a living that feeds all sorts of people.\u00a0 You use an arsenal of knives, spoons and various utensils in order to prepare all the food that you cook.\u00a0 One day, a graphic designer walks into your kitchen, plops and laptop and a mouse on your counter and tells you, these are your tools now.\u00a0 Please make me lunch.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">You\u2019re a graphic designer. You make shit on computers, using a variety of artsy software, specifically made to make shit.\u00a0 Sometimes the shit you make ends up on the internet on websites and sometimes it is manifested into something tangible.\u00a0 One day, an IT guy walks onto your floor and installs this shittily-made, outsourced, glorified data entry program and tells you, this is your primary software now.\u00a0 Please resume creating advertisements at a high volume and high quality.\u00a0 Except there\u2019s no please, because this IT guy is a fucking asshole<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">That\u2019s my life at work, in a nutshell.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">As much as I like the company that I work for, this entire episode of the life of graphic designers in advertising really makes me lose a lot of faith of the working world as a whole.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been in my general field for nearly 20 years at this point which in itself is hard to fathom, but I\u2019ve met a lot of real shitheads in that time.\u00a0 People who are self-absorbed, deliberate agitators, drama queens, ego maniacs, political gamers, name droppers, only seeing titles, delusional, manipulative, or any combination of these things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But the person who has been making my entire department\u2019s lives a living hell?\u00a0 They\u2019re in rarified air of people that I\u2019ve developed a deep hatred for.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to describe, although I have stated that I wouldn\u2019t piss on this person if they were on fire and begging for my urine to help and try and extinguish them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">It\u2019s gotten well beyond idiotic and way too far down the rabbit hole for anything to be really done on a departmental level.\u00a0 This person has wasted far too much money and too much time, and my biggest fear is that those higher than them gets to a point where they feel like scorching the earth and firing a whole fuckton of people, including my department, is the only viable strategy while they retool and re-strategize.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">This person is a masterful snake-oil peddling spin doctor who has been with the company for nearly a decade, which doesn\u2019t really happen unless they\u2019re good at spinning the bullshit like they are.\u00a0 And I use the phrase masterful ironically, because I don\u2019t really think they\u2019re really as smart as they think they are as much as they\u2019re just dense and reactive, because I don\u2019t think they\u2019re smart enough to strategically cherry pick their email conversations as they\u2019ve done as much as they\u2019re just stupid enough to forget to add key stakeholders to the conversations they\u2019re having.\u00a0 However, doing it like this inadvertently creates a lot of confusion and deniability to arguments on whether people were involved in discussions or not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">They\u2019re also an all-star when it comes to throwing people under the bus, and by now, I\u2019ve been thrown under the bus several times, as have numerous other people in my department.\u00a0 When the day is over, seldom anything is ever their fault or their team\u2019s fault, and it\u2019s always user error or inadequate training on someone on my team, or another team that\u2019s also not their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But what really served as the biggest impetus to breaking my general rule of no shop talk on the brog is the recent news I got that I found out that my own boss is leaving.\u00a0 Naturally, I\u2019m happy for them for getting away from this general hell I\u2019m in, but at the same time, I\u2019m very much concerned about my team, losing a key leader and cog in the machine.\u00a0 At first blush, there\u2019s always the whole curiosity of rapid advancement, but frankly I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m yet qualified to do the job of my departing boss.\u00a0 At the same time, my team is taking a gargantuan hit, structurally, weakening us and making me justify my concern that things could go in a negative direction.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">On the other hand, there\u2019s always the possibility of some advancement, in the event that my team and I can weather the storm, and then things settle down.\u00a0 But frankly, I don\u2019t really know how to feel.\u00a0 I don\u2019t particularly want to go back on the job hunt again, because it\u2019s a colossal pain in the ass, but at the same time, I really don\u2019t feel good about the future of my job in its current state.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The bottom line is that things are shitty at work.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like to bring my work life and cross-pollenate it with my personal life, but it\u2019s taking up so much of my every day capacity, that the overlap is pretty unavoidable.\u00a0 And it\u2019s largely the reason why my writing has been so limited this month, because frankly, I just don\u2019t have the time I used to, to get some decent, lighter-hearted writing done.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn\u2019t happen, by design, that I talk about my job.\u00a0 Frankly, most of the time it\u2019s nothing particularly interesting, and probably not really any different from anyone else who works a fairly normal corporate job anywhere in the world.\u00a0 But lately, my work has been a little bit more encompassing in my daily life &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46561\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Shop talk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[159,45,94,37,25,49],"class_list":["post-46561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-advertising","tag-fail","tag-graphic-design","tag-job","tag-technology","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46563,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46561\/revisions\/46563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}