and the reason is...
morning kids, been a long time since i last posted - good golly yes.
I had a wonderful 6 years working in that there London before being made redundant at the height of the dotcom tits up. So back up to Yorkshire with my tail between my legs to try and find gainful employment whilst using my parents house like a hotel. After a series of temp jobs working as late night security guard in a warehouse, I finally secured a full time position doing my real job - technical artwork. Now this was for a proper repro house instead of a nice cushy little design or marketing agency like i was used to, and I was starting on the bottom rung instead of going in at the top but - the money was ok and I needed the work.
As it turned out, the work was fucking awful. My line manager was a pug faced scrawny tart who was having an affair with the studio manager. We had a number of runins on points of process. But the Studio Manager was the worst. He used to walk around slow clapping to encourage people to work faster (it didn't work). One of his favourite lines was - if you're not looking at your screen, you're not working. He used to bark this at full volume. When the server went into meltdown and couldn't be restarted for 3 whole days he turned purple shouting at 40 plus artworkers telling them to find something to do. You're here to fucking work, not talk I think he said at one point. We couldn't access anything. He eventually started writing out hugely aggressive memos and printing them on A3 and pinning them to the wall with a flourish. It was like watching the Roman army posting edicts. We took to photocopying them, marking up the amends in red pen (he couldn't spell for toffee and his grammar was shit) and posting them over the top.
After 5 months, I had had enough. I asked for a pre appraisal meeting and presented my resignation letter. Steve (for that was his name) looked genuinely shocked. Im not enjoying it here - I said - and I don't think it's worth my staying. He asked what job I had got that was prompting this decision, and I told him that I didn't have a job lined up. I would much rather take my chances on the then flaky freelance market. He looked me squarely in the eye and said - we told you what the work was like at interview. I didn't even need to consider the response - Yes Steve, but you're an insufferable cunt. I stood up, cleared my desk and never looked back.
(kaptinkurtz, Sat 24 May 2008, 7:58, Reply)