The Kitchen Area

As I've mentioned before, the kitchen area is basically a counter, sink, etc. surrounded by two cubicle walls. In most instances, this isn't anything out of the ordinary in a small business atmosphere, but the problem I have with this one is how incredibly filthy it is. The kitchen is never cleaned as far as I can tell. The carpeting around the counter and fridge is grease-stained and smelly. I really don't understand how anyone would want to eat anything in or even around this. Ever.

Another great thing about working at this place is the smell from the sink. It has no garbage disposal, so of course there would be every reason in the world to just dump food into the sink, right? RIGHT?!? There's really nothing like walking by the kitchen area in the morning and getting a big whiff of what I can only assume (because the place has never been cleaned since I started in January) is years of built up mucky, decomposing filth in the drain. Note the dirt-encrusted sponges behind the sink. Yum. When's lunch?

The old "letter in the paycheck envelope" trick

My benevolent boss put a letter in with my check this week:

Dear Heidi,

Our Company is a small one that depends on each one of us. I understand that sometimes there are things beyond our control. However in the 9 weeks that you have been working here you missed 3 full days of work and were severely late 3 or more times. I would appreciate it if you do everything possible to be here as scheduled. You have to understand that if you are not here I can't be out on sales calls and this affects our Business.

Also, I would like you to follow priorities that are set up by us so that we can keep our level of service to our clients. Example: Last Friday, I came back to the office at 2:50 and you said that you [sic]are working on an (client's name removed) Job. It was a very small job. The job was not done and a proof was not sent to the customer, nor did we have any note from you to indicate if there was an issue with this job. I would really appreciate full cooperation in these areas of priorities and communication.

Please communicate with me and the other people so that we all know the details, are comfortable and can service our clients in the best possible way.

Thank you

[boss' signature]

This was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. The days I was late or called off were for job interviews, of course, and I don't blame him for wanting me to be there all the time. There's a good story behind the comments he made about last Friday. Last Friday, I was in the middle of finishing a mailing. Of course, when an order comes in, it's my responsibility, no matter what I'm doing, to generate a Work Order on the computer and to put together a "job box" that has the work order, any pertinent paperwork, samples etc. inside it for the person who's going to work on the actual job. What I had told my boss when he came back that afternoon was that I was doing the work order. Not working on the job. I'm not supposed to be working on this particular client's jobs, the night pre-press guy is. (The Boss is the one who told me this) There are always new job boxes stacked up on the graphics desk (where I and the night pre-press guy work) every single day. NO ONE communicates ANYTHING about these jobs to me. I have to either go through the previous night's e-mails and proofs to disseminate the info or ask the boss directly about them. Hell, a few weeks ago after being frustrated by this 'system', I even created a form that all of us are supposed to fill out with a bunch of check boxes, etc. so that whoever picks up the box will know EXACTLY what stage a job is at. Does anyone else fill out the fucking forms besides me? NO, of course not. So, I just gave up on that, because no one gives a shit. So, inevitably, it bit me on the ass. Just another reason I hate the fucking job so much.

PROLOGUE... after I read (and re-read) the letter yesterday, I decided to send the boss an e-mail telling him, since he's so unhappy with my performance, to start looking for my replacement, because I had a job interview this morning and I wouldn't be able to be there on time again today because of this. He was backtracking a lot after a conversation on the phone this morning, but I told him to definitely look for someone to replace me. It felt pretty good. Hopefully I will be out of there soon.

I really don't love being right all the time...

well, maybe just this once.

My boss is a marketing genius. Just ask him, he'll tell you. A lot. Nevermind that he has what some might term a disturbingly weak grasp of the spoken english word.

Yesterday I had to produce a direct marketing piece for a restaurant. The restaurant's owner had actually come up with some decent, coherent copy for the postcard. Of course, when I used this copy, along with writing some of my own, my boss had to "edit" the copy. (read: fuck about with until it was bereft of all cohesiveness) As I read what bossman had written, and what I, in turn, had to change the copy to, I knew that the minute the restaurant owner read his postcard, (sound of the needle scratching across an LP) there'd be changes-a-plenty.

The reason that this bugs me so much, beyond the obvious, is that one of the reasons my boss hired me is that he wanted me to write copy for him. Well, then again, a lot of what was said in my interview was pure shinola.

When the boss got the edits back, he gave it to me grudgingly and walked back to his office, apparently in defeat.

Bad Heidi!

The owner set me straight this morning.

Yes, I should have charged the guy from yesterday a dollar a minute for my time beyond the ridiculous 10 dollars he had to pay just to have me open his file and print it. Yeah.

It's super fucking cool that it doesn't even cross the owner's mind how ridiculous it sounds to me when he pays me 18 cents a minute.

Yesterday afternoon's customer got 200 copies and it cost him 116 bucks -- he got away with a HUGE BARGAIN, right? RIGHT?!?

[in the voice of Will Ferrel] "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!!"

Yesterday and Today

Had to take a night off from my daily recap...

Yesterday's fun

Some more backstory: There's another employee at the print co. that I work with, Brad. Brad only works 3 hours a day, coming in at 3:30ish. His only responsibility is to send things to plate and to do small edits. He has a full time job as a prepress operator somewhere on the west side. He lives over there too, so I'm pretty sure that the owner is paying him a lot more per hour than he is me because why else would he want to drive all the way to Beachwood? I leave every day at 4, so we usually have about 20 minutes or so to talk about any issues he's going to have to deal with regarding work I've started or whatever.

During our conversation yesterday, which the owner wasn't around to hear, Brad let it slip that the owner had told him that "Heidi's not going to be doing any of the work on the computer, she's mainly here to answer phones, take orders, process bulk mailings, etc."

News to me, because when I answered the ad in the classifieds for this job, guess what the headline was. Yeah, it wasn't receptionist or sales rep or mailing clerk. It was graphic designer. I don't know why I'm even surprized. God, fuck this place!

Today's fun:

Today was mostly alright because for whatever reason, hardly anyone called. Of course, most of my day was spent processing a huge mailing, then printing a shitload of self-promo postcards for the owner to mail out soliciting color copies. The best part of these postcards is that he made me rip off the (horrible) design of some pre-done cards some company tried to sell him in order to promote his color copying business. Yeah, AWESOME.

Then, in the middle of that, a guy comes in and wants some color copies. I had already quoted him a price so I take his cd back to the computer and print out a sample for him. Here's something else that fucking kills me about the owner: Every fucking 8.5x11 job that is done on the color copier he runs on 11x17 paper, which then we have to cut in half. Why? Because, of course, he only gets charged PER PAGE CLICK. Yeah, he's THAT cheap.

Thankfully, he didn't make me do this with this last guy because he didn't want to have to pay me $5.50 to stay the extra half hour that it would have taken for me to run the first copy (the guy wanted his signature on it) then put his copies two-up and then take the tabloid sized pages back to the print shop and cut them down to size.

I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and hurry in to work again!

The Gates of Hell and other crap

Today I got to hear what really happened on Debbie's last day. Tim and I had to talk quickly, because the owner was lurking. In hushed tones, I asked him what really happened and why Debbie was in tears when she left work the last day. Tim looked at me and without skipping a beat, said, "She was crying tears of happiness. This is a direct quote: 'When I walk out those doors for the last time, I'll be walking out of the gates of hell.'"

More fridge fun: I had to brave opening the fridge today because I brought a frozen microwave meal for lunch. As I opened the door, I was wincing in anticipation of the horror that would soon meet my nostrils. The owner looked at me and said with a completely straight face, "It doesn't smell anymore. I cleaned it this weekend." Not so. As I ran from the kitchen area, he opened it YET AGAIN, and rummaged around, muttering something along the lines of, "I t'ink maybe that this chicken ees bad... I don't know..." Odds are pretty good that it's going to stink just as bad or worse tomorrow.

I sense a sick day in my near future. A recruiter is trying to get me a position as a mid-level designer in a local corporation's in-house marketing department. Anything is better than this, even if I have to break out the business casual wear. Wearing jeans every day is nice, I'll grant you, but when it's in a place like this, even that joy is stolen away from you. I'm supposed to have a telephone interview, then if all goes well, I'll be going in for a full-scale grilling by the Marketing Manager. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Dorm Fridge

There's a small 'dorm fridge' in our "kitchen area" that is about 10 feet away from my desk. Something has gone seriously awry in the fridge, evidenced by the remarkably fetid raunch that smacks me square in the face every time someone even cracks the door. From the smell I'd venture that an extra spicy antipasto salad was placed in there upwards of 3 years ago.

The owner keeps complaining about the smell, and saying every time it's opened that he's told the wife to throw everything out. This has been going on since the day I started, about a month ago, so who knows how long it's been like this? She's obviously not too keen on the idea.

On one occasion, I mentioned that it would probably be in everyone's best interest to invest in a couple boxes of baking soda so that the odor could be kept at a minimum. Upon hearing this, the owner looked at me and with all seriousness said, "Baking soda? I know nothing about baking."

Complete bullshit

Kenny is the guy that runs our presses. He's an older guy, very crabby, sarcastic and feisty. In other words, Kenny and I speak the same language. Today, as is our usual practice, Kenny sat across from my desk and talked to me while having his lunch. We have had several discussions on the subject of the girl who used to work at this place before me. For the sake of sparing the reader pronouns, I'll call her Debbie. When I interviewed for this job with the owner, he regaled me with fantastic stories about how much he and his wife loved Debbie, and how much Debbie loved them and her job. The owner went so far as to tell me that when she had reluctantly taken another job that was much closer to her home, Debbie had actually been so emotional when leaving at the end of her last day, that she hadn't even been able to even say goodbye because she was literally in tears when she left. Call me jaded, but even before I started working at this place I knew this had to be complete bullshit.

Of course, I was right. I told Kenny of the story of Debbie that the owner had related during my interview and how the owner had gushed about the mutual love-fest between Debbie and he and his wife. Kenny just laughed and told me, "She hated him, and she hated this job. Yeah, she was crying alright. You need to ask Tim about what happened that day."

Tim is our delivery guy. Kenny told me a couple weeks ago that Tim (who is probably in his mid to late 50's) makes 7 dollars an hour. Most of the time, Tim isn't even there a full 8 hours a day either. This guy has a wife, kids and grandkids. I can't even begin to tell you how much it disgusts me to think that two weeks ago, when the owner's wife lost the keys to his car, Tim drove the owner to his ridiculously expensive home in a very nice suburb of Cleveland so that the owner could pick up his extra set of keys. Even worse? When the owner got into Tim's van, he actually was complaining that Tim was "moving too slow" as Tim was getting into the van.

I have no idea what Tim is going to tell me when I get a chance to talk to him without the owner around, but I have a feeling it's going to end up out here where everyone can read it.