On The Job Mistakes ... Or ... I Could Be Fired!
Posted: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
No matter how good you are or what you plan there some things that don't work out. I've done some stupid things in my time -- not mean, just stupid. Fortunately, no one has ever lost a body part or enough money that I couldn't make it back the difference. In the interest of showing my human side after picking everything apart in my previous Interview columns posted here, I have elected to spill my guts on some of my more star studded adventures.
I was very new at this company, they had just purchased some new equipment and one piece was a CD writer/burner (this was many years ago). I had never even seen one of these! For backing up art and information, this was going to make life easy. There were 30 copies of the company's finest work, no need to use that file for a while -- I began with that. I read the instructions, the test was fine. So the portfolio was written to disk and deleted from the system. (Up until the time I was there, NO ONE did any back up of anything. It was a miracle that nothing had happened to their data.)
And then it happened. It was GONE. The disks were clean. Something went wrong -- NOTHING was saved. And I had deleted EVERYTHING. Okay . . . don't panic . . . all the samples were taken from older files stored in no definitive order all over the company. All I had to do was find the art and reconstruct the portfolio before anyone missed it. So, in four weeks I came in early and stayed late, gleaning piece by piece . . . every . . . single . . . page. I corrected pages, improved pages, added pages . . . and no one ever knew. Only once, many months later, someone commented that the portfolio looked really slick. Ah . . . success!
The client sample book. One of my company's very big clients, for our reference, merited a printed full-color book of everything we had ever done for them. Quite a collection over a five year period. I put this together so when designing their next piece it would look similar for corporate branding. An executive from their advertising department wanted a copy. "How long would it take to reproduce that book?" asked my boss, in private. "About two weeks," I said offhandedly. He sighed. "I promised them a book at the next meeting . . . today." I was also attending that meeting. When time arrived, I walked in behind the boss with a large box. He began, "I'm sorry to tell you . . ." "And here's your book," I interrupted, handing this enormous volume across the table. The boss smiled and looked very hard at me. Later, in private, he asked how I produced it so fast. "I didn't," I admitted. "I simply gave them my book. I have all the time in the world to reproduce the book again, I have all the art!" I'm so GOOD!
The corporate meeting. I don't mind company meetings, I get to sit there, pretend I'm interested and look at something different than my computer screen. Most of the time, it's tolerable. Sometimes, it's akin to waiting your turn on the rack of the Spanish Inquisition. I didn't mind the general meeting, especially when it concerned my art department. After that, it was numbers . . . not even my numbers. I began drawing pictures, sketched layouts, wrote laundry, grocery and to do lists. There was a lull in the lecture, I raised my hand. Everyone was stunned. What does an artist have to say? "Excuse me . . . may I be dismissed? I can either be sitting here drawing little pictures to amuze myself while you talk about everything that doesn't concern me or the art department . . . or . . . I can return to my desk and make you a lot of money." It only took a second, I was allowed to make them money . . . they continued for hours in their boring meeting. And I did make them money!
The newsy client. Our client was the city's public transportation that had just been on the news for neglect of handicapped passengers. In protest, many handicapped and wheelchair people had chained themselves to buses, only to be unchained, arrested and carted away by the police. They looked VERY bad to the public. We were hired to make them look better. At the very first general office meeting, I raised my hand to comment. "Are you cleaning up your act or just your advertising. Otherwise, I'm working for you during the day and protesting against you in the evenings." There was a quiet gasp, and then mumble about what I said. Everyone wanted to know, no one wanted to ask. I was right in doing so . . . made everyone think . . . and they actually did clean up their act, not just their image.
The employment chop. I saw the writing on the wall, the company I was working for lost a major client and there was no work in house. The empty desks spoke volumes to everyone. Considering the size of the sales staff, we should have been so busy as to never go home. And this company had an award winning art team that the entire city admired. But the sales staff consisted of the boss-couple's friends, not hard-nosed sales people. Yes, even you can see it coming just reading this. There was a final meeting before final checks were distributed and I threw in my opinion -- wasn't like they were going to fire me, the jobs were lost already. I stood up to announce this, particularly to stare people in the face who should have done their job. "If your salespeople did the job they were supposed to do, I would have a job today." There was the expected obligatory gasp. The sales people looked embarassed, the art department looked smug. "I did a good job but that didn't guarantee me a job. You are losing the best art department I have ever worked with. By the time your friends bring in a job, you will not have the great staff to do this job. You will never recover from this." I had a lot of time, sitting at my empty desk to formulate these words. I saw it coming and was already looking for my next advertising job. And, sadly, I was right. They were gone about six weeks later.
Oh, well, it's a jungle out there. Working in art is different from working anywhere else. You love it and hate it for the same reason -- it's never the same way twice. But it sure beats sitting at an office desk, typing numbers and data under life-sucking florescent lights and punching that ever present, ever ticking time clock. Art is another world!
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