no subject
Wed, Aug. 15th, 2012 10:14 pm
Work is still draining. I'm not a stressy kind of person but work is stressing right now. I've stayed back late every day this week so far--Monday to do artwork for an extra 2 hours, meaning it was dark when I finished and therefore had to take the train home instead of riding, yesterday and today for half an hour on admin.
I don't do overtime. I'm not a fan. My workmate in the same position keeps trying to guilt trip me into doing overtime by making a martyr of herself and staying back two hours every night. She seems to forget that she can just go home, eat whatever Mum puts on the table, then fart around for a couple of hours before bed. Taking the train invariably takes at least twice as long as riding my bike, meaning I might not get home until 8pm. Even halfarsing it, the making, eating and washing up of dinner takes at least an hour, shower/get in pjs another half an hour, giving me a sum total of half an hour to myself, if I have the energy for it. And then of course there's stuff like washing and general adulting that someone living with Mum and Dad doesn't need to worry about. Sick to death of the guilt tripping, I swear. Next time she martyrs herself with another two hour overtime, I'm speaking up about it.
Work itself... I'm doing the work of two people. I'm supposed to be full time designer AND admin now. Boss-men keep saying how they understand what stresses we're under and they're making sure we're not doing the work of the sales reps, and they tell us how well we're coping and how we're keeping on top of everything and we're just not. It's one or the other. I keep on top of the admin and the artwork wall piles up and I get emails and phone calls from people wondering where their proof is. I keep on top of the artwork and I get emails and phone calls from people wanting their jobs or their quotes or their invoice fixed or whatever.
We answer the phone, which puts a real creative strain on when you're in the middle of a design and suddenly I have to go and look for a TAFE job or quote someone for some crappy job they're not even going to have printed with us or take their credit card details and process their payment or look up their job to see where it's at and no you can't have 6000 sodding offset flyers by Friday. We have someone to load TAFE jobs now but I still get three or four emails a day from them to load. I have to deal with production coming in with inane questions to which the answers are on the damn job sheet if they'd just read it. I'm the only one who knows enough about OPM to be able to do things with it without asking questions, and if anyone else does do anything with it, I'm the one who gets asked. I am the OPM expert, which was a hilarious title a year and a half ago and is just frustrating almost to the point of tears now.
I have randoms emailing me about quotes and where's my job and what's this invoice about and please can you print this business card and I got overcharged, and I have regulars for whom I may as well be their bloody account manager for the amount of work their actual account manager puts into their account. When anyone pre-press goes away--sales, managers, lead designer--it's just the two of us, who are already doing the work of two each, who pick up their slack. Neither of us want to take leave because we know exactly who'll be picking up the slack there, and we're not that cruel to each other.
Oh also, we're the ones who put out the fires. When someone gets a job back and it's printed wrong or they were overcharged or they need something done yesterday, we're the ones who organise the reprints, the ones who fix the invoices and raise credit notes, the ones who liaise with the factory, production, other suppliers and, if it comes to it, couriers, to get things done in tight time frames.
This was all okay half a year ago. I'm also supposed to be full-time designer now, along with all that entails, like meetings with clients about their design, designing things from scratch, all that stuff. THAT is what I want to be doing. THAT is the fun crap. THAT is what I went to uni for, tho I hardly realised it at the time.
I'm calling an official meeting tomorrow. It's just too much. I need leave but I can't take it because I know everything I don't get done during that week won't be done by anyone else either so it'll just pile up for me to do when I get back.
I hate it. TAFE storm is over, boys. Deliver on your promise and hire us a fucking admin.
I don't do overtime. I'm not a fan. My workmate in the same position keeps trying to guilt trip me into doing overtime by making a martyr of herself and staying back two hours every night. She seems to forget that she can just go home, eat whatever Mum puts on the table, then fart around for a couple of hours before bed. Taking the train invariably takes at least twice as long as riding my bike, meaning I might not get home until 8pm. Even halfarsing it, the making, eating and washing up of dinner takes at least an hour, shower/get in pjs another half an hour, giving me a sum total of half an hour to myself, if I have the energy for it. And then of course there's stuff like washing and general adulting that someone living with Mum and Dad doesn't need to worry about. Sick to death of the guilt tripping, I swear. Next time she martyrs herself with another two hour overtime, I'm speaking up about it.
Work itself... I'm doing the work of two people. I'm supposed to be full time designer AND admin now. Boss-men keep saying how they understand what stresses we're under and they're making sure we're not doing the work of the sales reps, and they tell us how well we're coping and how we're keeping on top of everything and we're just not. It's one or the other. I keep on top of the admin and the artwork wall piles up and I get emails and phone calls from people wondering where their proof is. I keep on top of the artwork and I get emails and phone calls from people wanting their jobs or their quotes or their invoice fixed or whatever.
We answer the phone, which puts a real creative strain on when you're in the middle of a design and suddenly I have to go and look for a TAFE job or quote someone for some crappy job they're not even going to have printed with us or take their credit card details and process their payment or look up their job to see where it's at and no you can't have 6000 sodding offset flyers by Friday. We have someone to load TAFE jobs now but I still get three or four emails a day from them to load. I have to deal with production coming in with inane questions to which the answers are on the damn job sheet if they'd just read it. I'm the only one who knows enough about OPM to be able to do things with it without asking questions, and if anyone else does do anything with it, I'm the one who gets asked. I am the OPM expert, which was a hilarious title a year and a half ago and is just frustrating almost to the point of tears now.
I have randoms emailing me about quotes and where's my job and what's this invoice about and please can you print this business card and I got overcharged, and I have regulars for whom I may as well be their bloody account manager for the amount of work their actual account manager puts into their account. When anyone pre-press goes away--sales, managers, lead designer--it's just the two of us, who are already doing the work of two each, who pick up their slack. Neither of us want to take leave because we know exactly who'll be picking up the slack there, and we're not that cruel to each other.
Oh also, we're the ones who put out the fires. When someone gets a job back and it's printed wrong or they were overcharged or they need something done yesterday, we're the ones who organise the reprints, the ones who fix the invoices and raise credit notes, the ones who liaise with the factory, production, other suppliers and, if it comes to it, couriers, to get things done in tight time frames.
This was all okay half a year ago. I'm also supposed to be full-time designer now, along with all that entails, like meetings with clients about their design, designing things from scratch, all that stuff. THAT is what I want to be doing. THAT is the fun crap. THAT is what I went to uni for, tho I hardly realised it at the time.
I'm calling an official meeting tomorrow. It's just too much. I need leave but I can't take it because I know everything I don't get done during that week won't be done by anyone else either so it'll just pile up for me to do when I get back.
I hate it. TAFE storm is over, boys. Deliver on your promise and hire us a fucking admin.