This Venting Will Blow Your Fake Toupee Off

Oh I told myself I was NOT going to do this. I was not going to use this blog as a venting post for my common (read: daily) frustrations with the office. I wasn’t but dammit, I’m going to. Consider it your warning.

I went into the office yesterday morning happy as all hell. The weather was beautiful, I took my sweet time getting ready in the morning and I was at the tail end of my project list for the week. I was thinking, surely I’d be damn near done with my day by 10:00am! Yeah, I set myself up for that failure. As soon as I got in and got settled one more major project headed my way. And this is the kicker- I’m often asked to perform tasks or complete projects with software I do not have access to, in a time frame in which I don’t have time to get approvals and purchase it in (let alone learn how to use it), in some form of a task I have no experience in (Really? Seriously? Where was that on my resume?) Welcome to fucking advertising and the world of graphic design. In a company with not enough designers on board.

So hours into this project, after going through the motions of thinking, “YES, I can do this!” and being proud of myself for coming up with a couple different creative solutions, and then later going through the absolute hell of frustration when it didn’t quite turn out the way I expected, guess who walks in? Oh yes, le boss!

He has this absolute wonderful talent of managing to climb over into my area as my brain is trying to process five different things going on. And while I KNOW DAMN WELL he can see I’m squinting in thought at my computer screen, he’ll insist on spurting out whatever is on his mind without any courtesy towards me.

“So you know about X, Y, and Z for this project right?” he spits out, complicating my project even further. No, how would I know that was required? As usual, no one tells me shit.

I glanced at him and nodded. “As soon as I can get X working the rest will fall into place.”

He shook his head back at me. “Why didn’t you ask Michael to help you?!” he roars back. Honest to GOD I just sat there stunned. I didn’t answer; I just starred at the condescending look on his face like he thought I was a complete idiot. I sort of stumbled over a couple words as he was walking off.

Now honestly, I’m not one of those people who happens to be incredibly quick at comebacks; I’m often caught off guard. If I was, I probably wouldn’t be employed for very long because generally the first thoughts that roll through my head would not be considered ethnically compliant for my corporate office. For example, yelling “you’re a fucking asshole and you HAVE NO IDEA what you’re talking about!” probably wouldn’t be ok. Chucking my gorgeous IKEA lamp at his head wouldn’t either (as often visualized in my mind) and frankly I love that damn lamp. So as you can see, this lack of ability has its perks.

Nevertheless, my boss has really been an asshole lately. Had he given me two seconds to explain, he would have found out that Michael- as awesome as he is at his job- A. didn’t know anything about what I was doing (I had already asked), B. gave me solutions he looked up on the internet of which I had already tried, and C. HE DIDN’T HAVE THE DAMN SOFTWARE. Fuck you very much.

And really, after almost three years you think I’d be given the benefit of the doubt that I know what the hell I’m doing. Like “hey, we’ve thrown enough shit at her that she’s managed pretty effectively given she had no idea what she was doing- maybe she might actually be on top of it this time.” I can actually hear Carlos Mencia in my head saying, “DUH DA DA DUH!”

Now I know I’m picking on my boss here. And frankly, he does deserve it, even though I think I know why he has acted this way most recently. You see, his focal point has been 110% on output. That’s it. Nothing else matters, no structure, formal job descriptions, the company’s finances, nothing. I’ve seen him ask ridiculous tasks of people with whom it is NOT their job to do (mainly because they were the closest person in proximity to him when he thought it up), and I had witnessed him all but completely waste the company’s money on useless presentations and materials that don’t even get used (particularly when traveling or having clients in). And really, I’m aware that our department is specifically under the gun of the higher up’s, I’m aware that the economy sucks… but you know what? All of these things may be true but it doesn’t provide any excuse, in my opinion, to not extend the most basic and common courtesy and respect in the workplace. Geez, we have to put up with each other (more so than that, actually work together as a team) for 50+ fucking hours of the week, so isn’t that the least we could do?

So atlas, I worked until almost 7:00pm last night then drug myself home, poured a glass of wine and bitched to myself about all of this. It is very frustrating to ponder that, given the balance between my income and the cost of living here, I almost made more money back home in MO waitressing. And that was good exercise, nice people, decent tips and no computer screens, carpel tunnel, or asshole bosses that need to put some more work into their people and management skills. I can now see why people go to grad school after college… really, all that work for THIS?!

Thank GOD it's the weekend!