Stay away from me Office Politics Monster, STAY AWAY!!!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m a graphic designer for a testing company, and have been here for over 4 years. I am low on the totem pole, and I prefer it that way. I in no way want to get mixed up with office politics. But somehow I have, mainly I’m actually willing to fix the problem myself when nobody else will do it.

Case in point: shortly after I started working here, I get requests from various project managers to put the company logo on a particular project. Nobody has an electronic version of it. They just have the company letterhead. This has obviously been printed from the same plate for the past few decades, and looks a little rough around the edges, so I decide not to scan it. I instead whip out Illustrator, draw up my own version of the logo, and voila.

Some time later, the Operations Manager for the company gets in touch with me. He hears I have an electronic version of the logo. He needs an EPS to send to a design company to put our logo on the sides of our delivery trucks. I say sure, no problem. He’s amazed that it didn’t involve anything complicated. So, he gets me to design versions of the logo for business cards, letterhead, the whole nine yards. He gets me to make several different versions of the logo on top of that in case somebody wants a solid black version, or a white fill, a gradient fill, and so on. No problem.

I put all this together in a folder on the company network common drive and inform everybody if they need a company logo, there it is.

Recently, things started getting a little ugly. The IT department wants to be able to implement the company letterhead on their output. They contact the printing department, the scoring department, and various other individuals about supplying them with an electronic version of the letterhead. Nobody has anything. The IT department is pretty pissed that these departments haven’t entered the 20th century yet, and is ready to write nasty letters and complain to the president when one of them hears about me and asks if I have something that could help them. I say sure, no problem. I take 5 minutes to design the company letterhead in Illustrator. The lady is amazed that it was so easy and thanks me for making this such a smooth process for them.

I get CCed on an email from the president’s secretary. She says that the “new” company logo that just popped up might be in violation of copyright laws and that we need to do something about this mysterious company logo folder that popped up on the common drive. You know, the one I set up last year.

I reply and own up to it. Yes, I was the one who infiltrated the company with these suspicious logos in an attempt to sabotage the place where I work. Actually, I said I put the folder together and would be glad to make any changes they needed.

The head of the scoring department rears her ugly head. Apparently, she forgot all about when the Operations Manager showed her the logo I made last year. She also apparently forgot the email I sent out the day before. She says “Who designed his letterhead? The words at the bottom of the letterhead are wrong and the calipers look funny.” The president gets CCed on this, because apparently they discussed changes that needed to be made to the company letterhead months ago and didn’t tell anybody else about it.

So now the prez’s secretary wants to meet with everybody and discuss the situation. A R G H. Leave me alone, Office Politics Monster.

2

Did you do a redesign or just re-create the original? Are the words at the bottom and calipers “funny” in the original or identical?

When I do a re-creation, I always scan the original to place in Illustrator and “trace” around it with the pen tool so that it matches the original as closely as I can.

3

Knowed Out, my deepest sympathies. Often at my workplace, I have been in the same boat. I like to call the opposition “Territory Monsters,” myself.

Please let us know how it goes. Props to you for being efficient and giving at your job. I hope your boss appreciates it. You’ve got my respect.

Um, but this is a pretty weak rant. More MPSIMS, unless the meeting goes badly enough to drive you to swearing and indiscreete metaphor.

4

CYA time. Bring copies of your email and anything else that might back your case up. Don’t let them push you around, you were doing them a favor!

5

I used to run across that sort of thing every once in a while. I used to call them “Jurassic Park” and make roaring dinosaur noises whenever I left their department. :wink:

6

Been there, done that, bought the shirt.

At a company I worked for two or three jobs ago, I was stationed in the dispatch department (even though I was hired for tech support). The powers that be there already didn’t like me, because I had requested a transfer within a week of being there because, silly me, I wanted to work in the department I interviewed with. Funny side note: As a result of this “incident,” the temp agency I got the job through actually created a policy dealing with requesting within a certain period after the employee’s start date at a company. I hope they named it after me. :smiley:

Anyway - in dispatch we used a criminally ineffecient internal web page to keep track of customer information. Being a bit of a webster, I designed a navigation frame to go around it that made things much easier. It worked great, and literally saved me two or three minutes per call.

I made this for myself, and didn’t announce it - but anyone that walked by marveled at how easy I was getting around and asked that I set them up the same way. Soon, almost everyone on the floor was using my little ghetto navigator.

The person who set up the intranet page was not amused. An email went out from the department manager (who was pure evil incidentally), stating in no uncertain terms that we were not allowed to use any unauthorized web pages in conjunction with the internal sites for some half-baked reason. We were forced to delete the pages off of our computers, and wait for a promised redesign of the real site.

It was eventually redesigned by the intranet guy, and it looked strangely like what I had done, except for a few differences. Of course, these differences made the new site almost as difficult to use as the old one.

I had enough soon after that. When I quit in disgust a few weeks later, the head of Human Resources asked me in the exit interview why I was leaving. I mentioned that I was hired for a technical position, and placed in a department that takes down callers’ phone numbers, then sends out someone else to do the technical work. She said, “Oh. Well I guess that sums it up.” :smiley:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m working on a project gathering information about a service that our company may want to purchase in the near future. Of course, the CIO has already decided to go with the product, so my job is basically to tell him what he wants to hear. I feel like Fox News.

7

Homebrew: That’s usually what I do too, but the calipers looked blotted, like a 10th-gen xerox copy, so I cleaned it up a bit. It turns out that the scoring dept. lady designed the logo years ago using an ancient version of Corel. What I assumed was blotted design from years of overuse was the way she actually designed it. That’s why it looked “funny” to her.

She asked me if it’s possible to incorporate her logo design into my letterhead design. I put her request on indefinite backburner.

Rysler: In the latest round of e-mails, a meeting has been proposed, but nobody’s come up with a time/date yet, and I’m willing to let that languish into interoffice limbo. I did say that I changed the words on the letterhead as per the scoring dept. head’s request, and the prez’s sec’y seemed satisfied with that, so maybe it’ll end there.

Plus, this seemed like the place for bitching about the workplace, so that’s why I posted here. Next time I’ll put in a few more goddamns, assholes and fucks just for you, mmmkay? :slight_smile:

slortar: :smiley:

8

Corel

::shudder::