Why I Hate My Job

The BBQ Pit
1

Could I just once have a job where every single person didn’t second-guess every damn thing I do or say? Just once? Is there something in my appearance or demeanor that screams, “Don’t believe it! I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about!”

Really, if what I am supposed to do is shut my mouth and be a good little productionist, call me that, because if there’s anything I ain’t right now, it’s Creative Director. I cannot, I will not become an ardent follower of the “Big Giant Golf Ball” school of art*…I will not willingly create crap that does not fit the goal, the audience, in short, the purpose of the project. Why hire someone for this specific purpose and then allow every fool person who walks in the door dictate the design? I could just as easily stay at home if my opinion and experience is that worthless. I guess it makes me a fool but I don’t like being paid for nothing.

I feel churlish saying it, but the advent of WYSIWYG editors has created monsters…every single person in the whole fucking world is now a web designer. Just because you can put up a page does NOT make you artistically talented, or aware of even the most basic design principles. Of course, if I lived in even a moderately sophisticated locale, this distinction would be clear, but no, I have to do proposals for the fucking “Spongy-Bungee” two-bit T-shirt applique entrepreneur crowd. I can’t even send my portfolio to anyone, I’m so ashamed of the crap I’ve been forced to produce because we let our clients dictate the final look without so much as a whimper. I wouldn’t hire me either, based on that junk. And how can I explain that my company doesn’t believe in the analysis phase or educating our clients in design? It makes us all look bad.

I really need to take up rock carving or something that not everyone can do–and something that still exists when the lights go out. Clearly I just don’t have much aptitude in the only area that counts: ass-kissing!

*This is what I call design dictated by the client who always prefaces things with “I’m a very visual person,” and then is completely unable to visualize ANYTHING in the abstract. This type, if faced with design for, say, a golf course, will immediately suggest the very least subtle, least metaphorical, most trite of all possible design elements: “Oh! I know! We should have a big golf ball that spins in…” sigh

Thanks for letting me vent.

2

Okay, I hate your job, too.

3

You know, it sounded so cool for a while there, but I’m hating it now too…

“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.” Bob Dylan

4

Anyone who can come up with ““Big Giant Golf Ball” school of art” is much too cool and smart to be stuck in that job for too long. So, cheer up and keep saying nasty things about those guys behind their backs.

pat

5

You would think that having a creative job would be the most enjoyable profession possible. You know, expressing your artistic talents, being the genetive source of a product, making something where there was once nothing; what more could you want?

Therein lies the problem. You see, it is not your job that sucks, it is the crushingly drab jobs of those hacks in marketing, accounting and management (or in your case, the client). They see your job as being “fun”, and can’t resist
horning in, to live vicariously through you. They want what you have, the chance to create, even though they haven’t a clue what that means. They think that by “suggesting” changes (read “demanding”) they have participated in the creative process, thus redeeming themselves from the grinding, souless jobs they find themselves chained to.

I found the best way to deal with them is to listen to their ideas with a quizzical, confused look on your face (not much of a stretch sometimes), then execute their idea in the worst way, as if you really didn’t understand it. Don’t argue or complain, just keep earnestly turning out stuff that gets further and further away from their idea, until they start believing that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Trust me, it works.

It’s not you just youeden, it has always been thus for the creative talent. No one outside of the artistic ranks views what you do as “work”. In their eyes, you should pay them for the opportunity to draw/write/compose all day. They don’t get it, and they never will. Ironically, you can take comfort in that.

TT

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
–James Thurber

6

Eden, you’ve cleared up one of life’s mysteries for me. Every now and then, I’ll see a TV commercial that so stupifyingly bad that I wonder why the ad agency (assuming that it WAS produced by an agency, and not in house) even let it out of its cage. For some reason, the worst offenders are related to cars (used cars, car insurance, and lawyers specializing in car injuries). Yes, I remember the ads…and when I am in the market for a car, or insurance, or a lawyer, I take pains to avoid the ones with really bad ads. If the company is so incompetent that it has THIS sort of ad, I really don’t want to do business with it.

Lynn

7

Thanks, everyone.

Ordinarily I don’t hate my job, but we are in the process of (1) doing yet another project (actually two, a web site AND a CD for the same company) that is going to hell because we aren’t allowed to even SPEAK with the end client, much less try to help them with their idiotic design specifications, and (2) failing to sign a big juicy deal with a national furniture chain because our portfolio is full of exactly this kind of crap. How many times do we have to make these same damn mistakes before we can do something differently? I’m beginning to understand the appeal of management positions.

8

Lynne: the ads you reference are produced by someone’s brother who has a freeware video editing program called McVideo Pro Max 3000 installed on a 486 in his garage. He spends his time watching TNN’s NASCAR coverage to get ideas for special effects, like exploding price points and page-rip effects.

9

Or said brother got his hands on an Amiga Video Toaster and just can’t get enough of those COOL PUZZLE WIPES, YEAH!!

I work with news producers & reporters; not as bad as clients but some of your rantings ring true for me as well. It is amazing to me exactly how clueless someone can be (in this day and age of computers) in trying to understand what I do. One exchange I had with a reporter went thusly:

REPORTER: Do you have a picture of Joe Blow in you computer there somewhere for a graphic I need?

ME: No, I don’t. I can do a tape search and see if he’s in our video library somewhere, and then grab a shot of him.

REPORTER: No, no I already looked. (HERE IT COMES…) Can’t you just create him in there or something??

That’s right Create him. Do you see “OMNIPOTENT DEMIGOD” tatooed on my forehead?

I’m also familiar with the obsession with animated graphics. “Can’t you make it move or something?” is a question often lobbed at me. Things don’t have to move, people! The audience is capable of understanding what the graphic is trying to illustrate without having something “fly in” or depicting a giant spinning golf ball or whatever.

Ah, me. Back to work.

“My hovercraft is full of eels.”

10

Torgo, let them know that at least one customer doesn’t particularly LIKE it to move! In fact, if it’s a product that I think I might be interested, I want to see it as more than a flash across my screen.

Quick cuts and moves (whatever the technical name for that stuff, I don’t know) is fine for music videos, but not for ads!

Lynn

HELP!!! I’m being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

11

One of the last websites I did before I left New Zealand was heavily criticised and insulted by my boss (which led to a shouting match and me storming out of the office, shaken up and hating him forever more).

Why? Because he didn’t get to have his own input in the site design. It was all the client and me coming up with it ourselves, and my boss, untalented fool with neither skill nor an original idea in his tiny shrivelled brain, didn’t have his finger in this pie.

He’d already ruined several other of my websites with some of his tampering, mostly taking all the graphics out in an attempt to get the traffic as low as possible so he didn’t have to pay for it, but this time he went too far.

Ironically, it turned out to be the most successful site I’ve ever made.

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