ENTRY 11: I want a painting. You have 30 Minutes
 

Note: Remember friends - this is all in the past.

Today a customer brought in a stretched canvas measuring 24” x 36” and asked my boss for 12” x 18” digital prints. Being completely oblivious to the world of design, my boss said, “sure” and charged the pastor $12. (Once again, all of our clients are members of the church as my employer only associates with people of faith.) I was then handed the large canvas and told to “make it happen” and that I had 30 minutes.

My initial reply was to request a Nikon D5600 (or similar digital SLR) with a standard lens, three tripod spotlights with full-spectrum UV photography bulbs, and a stage. This thoroughly confused my employer as he didn’t know what any of those words meant. “I don’t have any of that,” he replied. “Well how then am I to produce the digital image?” I asked, wincing in anticipation of his response. He gestured lazily to a photocopier in the corner of the shop and said, “just scan it.”

Dark clouds quickly moved in and blocked out the sun. Crows began cawing angrily at the impending doom fast approaching my workplace. I sighed, and began to explain, in as simple language as I could for my boss just a few of the problems with his solution. I mentioned that the photocopier has a non-removable lid, and that the left side of the scanning area had a large, raised lip so the canvas would not actually lay flush with the scanning surface. This would result in large shadows, distortion from angled scans, and color shifting. Also, the maximum scan area is just over 8.5” x 11” so I would be required to digitally stitch a stockpile of partial scans, none of which would line up or be in any way color consistent. I explained that oil paint brush strokes take time to register when digitally stitched. And perhaps worst of all, the lid on the scanner prevented me from capturing any of the center area of the large painting, so I would have to digitally draw in a 16” x 6” area missing from the scans. But my boss would have none of these silly limitations of reality, and I was again told I had thirty minutes to complete the $12 order.

What I didn’t share with my boss was that I worked for years for the region’s largest photo production company, specializing in antique photo restoration. I would normally charge the industry standard of $60-$90 an hour to digitally reproduce a large format portrait or painting, but thanks to capitalism, my boss can simply add this job to my ever-growing list of titles under his company and still pay me $14 an hour for my expertise. With no other option, I killed myself for 30 minutes, scanning, adjusting histograms, digitally registering partial scans, re-lighting seams, painting away all the heavy shadows, and repainting the large missing area of the Sistine Chapel which could not be scanned. I got it done, and he scoffed at me and said, “See? It wasn’t that hard.”

I’d rather give up the $14.

ENTRY 12: Geriatric Marketing Inc.
 

Today my beloved CEO had yet another brilliant idea. He’d originally inherited his father’s printing company, but ever the intrepid entrepreneur, he decided that he was also an app developer and publisher, and later a social media marketing agency. But on this day he had an entirely new and equally inept business ploy - he now fancied himself a real world marketing firm. His staff would consist of one man - our favorite sexagenarian dolt who, this morning, forgot his bridge.

“You know that app company cell phone I gave you?” he asked confidently.

“You mean the one which hasn’t received a single call in three years? Why yes, yes I do,” I replied.

“I’ve got a great idea - since we’re not using it, let’s give it to [Dolt] to use for his marketing contacts!”

“Well,” I challenged him, “there is just one small problem with that. He doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, let alone the Google Voice number forwarding and messaging features I’ve set up for this device.”

“Well you can teach him!” he said excitedly.

And so, for the next two hours, I had to spoon feed our elderly friend the basics of cell phone use. At first, he dismissed my offer. “I have an Android phone already,” the Dolt explained proudly and held up his iPhone.

The next task was to transfer the Google Voice profile to the Dolt’s associated Google account. This proved difficult, as he had no idea what his Google login was. “I set this account up for you just over a month ago. Where did you write down your password?” I asked, (fully aware of his inevitable reply.) “I didn’t bother. I didn’t think I’d need it,” declared the Dolt.

But the true test of my humanity came when it was time for Dolt to record his voicemail greeting. He accomplished the task, after only thirty minutes of trial and error. Unable to locate the pound sign to accept his recorded greeting, he continued to terminate the call over and over and over again. His finished greeting was over a minute long - an insufferably slow instruction manual as to how to leave a message, with his assurance that he would return the call if he ever figured out how to check his phone. But in the end, after only two hours of struggle, the task was complete, and I bestowed upon him a device which he still has no idea how to use. Satisfied with his accomplishments, Dolt returned to his desk and resumed his favorite task - doodling marketing ideas with watermarked commercial thumbnail graphics in Powerpoint. (I hate this man.)

The day ended on a positive note, however. Our CEO was having difficulty with the Chrome Remote Desktop I’d installed for him. He too had no idea what his password was.

This marketing agency is going to take the world by storm.

lulz

So do you make things needlessly complicated for your former coworkers simply for your own sadistic amusement? I certainly wouldn't be able to help myself.

Needless complexity in an inherent property of anything I attempt to teach these Luddites. Their capacity for technological understanding is so limited, that even the most basic tasks become hour-long ordeals.

Outlook is painfully difficult for these people to navigate. And remembering passwords for anything is out of the question. Remember: This is the guy who struggles to operate a MOUSE and who worked for 30 minutes without success to get sound out of a training video before I informed him that he didn't have any speakers.

I am so over that sh*thole. But thanks for reading these entries. They do me a lot of good to get this crap out of my skull.

Might I ask what the precipitating incident was for your former boss to decide that he wanted to expand from printing to apps and beyond in the first place? It doesn't exactly seem like the most logical leap.

It's a brilliant story! My boss once attended a tradeshow and brought me along. One of the presentations was about "a revolutionary new technology which was going to take the print industry by storm and totally transform it!"

The company openly stated that the print industry is dying and that printers need a new source of income. They said they had the answer - a technology which takes digital copies of print material, adds the option for media-rich content, (audio and video objects), and encapsulate the glorified PDF into an ebook sort of environment, mobile friendly, with a dashboard of issues, in the form of an app you can download from the app stores.

It was their intent that printers offer digital versions of their print customer's work touting the potential for global distribution at no cost as a supplement to every print order.

The complete failure of this technology is evident at the outset. NO ONE is going to dedicate precious real estate on their cell phone for an app that only exists for your rinky-dink company's quarterly newsletter.

But my boss ate it right up and declared himself an "app developer."

Using their click-and-compile interface, we fed PDFs into their web-based application and it automatically submitted them to the Google Play and Apple App Stores as apps.

The trouble was, my boss didn't understand that you have to market an app for anyone to know it exists. He didn't, so for nearly three years, his apps sat in the stores with ZERO downloads.

And Apple even wrote us emails saying, "Guys? you're making us look bad. This isn't an app... it's a PDF. And you haven't updated it or created a new issue in over a year. Push some new content and features or we're pulling it from our stores."

So my boss let them get pulled. There are newer developments in his calling himself an "app developer" and a "marketing company", but I'll save those ridiculous tales for future entries to this journal.

What do you think?

Please tell your old boss that I have recently acquired the deed to a bridge in Arizona that I believe would make him $50,000,000 if he just sends all of his life savings to my Nigerian bank account.

I don't yet feel comfortable disclosing his latest get-rich-quick scheme, but I will say this - it involves him capitalizing on the new and emerging market of ...vaping.

I wish I could make up sh*t this insane.

vaping...


https://i.makeagif.com/media/7-05-2015/BLIi8a.gif

ENTRY 13: It’s His Professionalism That I Respect
 

Ever the capitalist, our CEO is always looking for opportunities to save a buck by piling more and more work onto his existing staff so that he doesn’t have to pay anyone else.

Originally hired as a CSR, the workload diminished considerably over time, and after our prepress designer quit in fit of frustration at our boss’ ignorance, the baton was passed on to me. It didn’t matter that I’d left college years before InDesign became the industry standard application and that I had no training to work as a prepress designer, I was told to just “figure it out.”

So I did, and excelled at it despite all of our CEO’s efforts to set me up for failure. As the weeks passed, other job titles were added to my name, including app developer, app publisher, designer of paperless workflow automation solutions, marketing content developer, video producer with accompanying voiceover work, marketing strategist, print workflow manager, social media marketing manager for his and several other companies, printer, bindery lacky, and janitor. Of course, no compensation was offered for these additional roles, so I continued to kick along just skirting minimum wage.

One of my self-confessed caveats in performing these roles untrained is that my linear mind requires that I take careful notes of each process which I then type up and catalog as reference material for future employees. Over the past 3 years, I’ve developed over one hundred training guides and manuals, complete with visual step-by-step guides so that complex tasks can be performed reliably and with great accuracy.

Unfortunately, our CEO sees no value in this, and communicated that he expects that I be shown someone’s job once and just remember it all. This includes all the countless exceptions to every standard print configuration in the case of print operations, where one particular paper type uses a gamut of different settings depending on simplex vs. duplex printing, ink coverage, stock weight, etc. Hence the need for my well-organized notes.

Today my boss saw me with notes in hand after he instructed me to operate the printers for him. He walked up, snatched my process guide from my hands, held it conspicuously over the trash, waited until he had my full eye-contact and attention, and dropped all my notes into the trash.

He said, “figure it out” and walked away.

I love my job.

You said your boss inherited the business from his father? So he's basically a talentless rich kid (or the middle class equivalent I guess) who sponges off his employees' actual talents while somehow managing to keep his superiority complex intact by sheer force of not quite going bankrupt? How does he even keep his company afloat? I'm tempted to think you're exaggerating, cause no one that incompetent could succeed at anything besides music or being a forum talking head.

There is no exaggeration I assure you. And it is precisely this sort of self-serving, boys club business model which thrives in an era of late capitalism. It isn't that he is successful. Far from it. By any measure his business is an abysmal failure. But that doesn't matter because he will continue to funnel inherited funds into it to feed his ego and his arrogance.

Final Entry - ENTRY 14: Why Won’t You Work For Free?
 

And so, dear friends, it came to pass that I secured a far more rewarding job in IT. I gave my notice, took the high road, and left on the best of terms. My old boss found himself in a predicament, as he knew all too well that no one could replace me to continue performing all the IT work I’d been doing for him, from the payroll systems I constructed to the paperless workflow automation I’d built… he needed me. So he asked that I stay on one hour a week to drop by and maintain my automated systems. He offered me $20 for a minimum 1-hour compensation to make it worth my trip.

But of course, it didn’t stop there. In my first two weeks at the new company, my old boss phoned me three times during the day and night asking me to walk him through various complex technical troubleshooting issues. Quickly realizing that this was establishing an undesirable pattern, I drafted a concise and professional email indicating that the terms discussed for my continued employment did not include phone support and that I would need to be compensated for my time if he is to continue to phone me.

He replied saying he was shocked by my demand. He said he was already paying for my health insurance for the rest of April and that this entitled him to limitless phone support with no compensation. He made it abundantly clear that he was being kind and generous and that I should continue to work for free. (A hint - if you have to tell someone how kind and generous you are… you probably aren’t.) I replied, stating that providing insurance in no way exempts him for paying an employee for their work. Compensation for my labor is not contingent upon his generosity. I proposed a discounted rate of service to be billed in 15-minute increments for future phone assistance. And as expected, he pushed back again saying that I was clearly failing to understand him.

He said that he was already paying me a flat rate of $20 for my on-site weekly visits, and as it doesn’t actually take me a full hour, he’s entitled to use any remaining minutes (usually 30-45) for phone support and just roll it into my hour. (This is his MO, as for the entire duration of my employ, I was required to appear 15 minutes early without pay every day and all time worked after 5 was rounded away uncompensated.) I remained firm and explained that I am now a contract worker and that the industry standard for phone support is $1 a minute. I’d offered a discounted rate as a courtesy as we had an established business relationship, but that the $20 minimum hour rate is what I need to make my on-site visits worth doing at all in the first place. Support phone calls above and beyond that $20 need to be compensated. I closed the conversation saying that if he refuses to pay me for my labor that I will not be taking any more of his calls. I invited him to email me his requests in advance of my weekly on-site visits and said I would handle the requests at that time.

My old boss is a piece of ****.

That's just sad.

And in the End…
 

An unexpected supplemental conclusion to the tales of 9 to 5!

Yesterday was one of my weekly 1-hour pops into my former workplace to perform general routine maintenance of the automation systems, payroll systems, and 14 social media sites I manage as my boss’ IT consultant. But this would turn out to be a unique visit. When I sat down to start working, the CEO pulled up a chair and said, “You know… I’ve been thinking…”

What follows that phrase is without fail always an amusing statement. Previously it had been followed by phrases like, “I’ve been thinking of starting a payroll company…” or “I’m thinking about cornering the vaping market…” or “I’ve decided that we’re a digital marketing firm now…” and things of that nature. But this time, he said, “I’ve decided to delete your last remaining email account, because it will save me $5 a month.”

I reminded him, as I did the last time he removed my account without sharing it with me, that this account is our primary company calendar profile, and is tied to all of our third-party automation providers, the account with administrative privileges for Google scripts for our automation, and is the destination address for all service receipts, notifications of service outages, communications from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for our apps, and other critical messages. But that didn’t seem to bother him.

“How will I communicate to you what tasks I’ve performed on my visits?” I inquired.

“Well, you can type up and print out a Word doc. Besides, I have another idea as well.”

Here it comes.

“I was thinking, you can probably teach all this basic maintenance stuff you do to my hourly associate, right?”

“Do you mean the 70-year-old woman who does your CSR work?” I cringed.

“Yeah. And our pre-press girl. They can handle it I’m sure.”

“But how will they identify and adjust for anomalies in the system? Rows exceeding the limit for Google Script functionality, user errors, etc?” I asked.

“Well, that’s when I’ll call you,” he explained. “I’ll take you off the payroll, and just call you when I need you to fix what they’ve broken or let break down. I’ll give you $25 whenever we need to rebuild the automation.”

What our CEO fails to grasp is that, without someone knowing the ins and outs of the system and adjusting for anomalies, operation is going to grind to a halt constantly. It would inevitably cost him far more in time to have me clean up their mess than to just have me maintain it myself.

“And they’re going to manage the 14 social media sites as well?”

“Sure!” he said. “They can do that between print jobs.”

So there I had it. I was being terminated after I train an elderly woman and a kid who does pre-press to manage the paperless automation and payroll systems I’ve built. In a way, it seemed a blessing - he was effectively burning the bridge for me so that I wouldn’t have to inevitably walk away myself when I finally decided that the charity of my weekly visits was no longer worth my while. (Seriously… I don’t need the $20.)

So I agreed. Next Tuesday, I’m dropping by for a few hours with twenty-five odd pages of process guides I’ve drafted on how to perform basic maintenance tasks and adjust for common errors in the systems. I’ll train his hourly associates as best I can and I will walk away a free man.

Technically speaking, I’ll be off the payroll and will have no obligation to repair the calamity which I expect to occur in the weeks ahead. My peers are telling me to resist any sense of nobility or empathy for my system and to just let it crumble.

Could he sue me for refusing? I’m not sure. He’s verbally terminated my employ, and I’m not signing a contract agreement thereafter.

I think I might finally be free.

Cheers, friends.

- A Classy Bastard

1. What are the chances he'll throw your process guides in the trash?

2. I'd stay on for as long as the cringe/lulz continued and start obviously condescending to your old boss.

The person who I trained to take over my responsibilities entered her email address to take over several accounts as administrator. It ended in @aol.com.

I'm surprised your old job doesn't use dial-up or Netscape.