Godly of him.

Hmm, disincentive. Sounds like a good strategy.

ENTRY 5: Do You Need Me to Read It To You?
 

Seven months ago, as mentioned in ENTRY 3, our beloved CEO decided that we are now a social media marketing agency, (meaning that we will log in to a client’s FB account once each week in case there are any notifications). In an effort to clarify the real-world responsibilities of such a company, I performed a few days of research and drafted A Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing. Impressively, after only seven months, he actually read, (or claims to have read) the piece, and took a moment to send me a reply email. The message kindly shot down my effort, stating, “you know, this took a long time to write but it's all obvious facts I already know. I need solutions," effectively communicating that I’d wasted his time.

My internal response was one of mutual criticism. I wondered, "if this is all so very obvious, then why does our entire social media presence consist of a cycle of the same three pun-themed advert posts week in and week out? Why haven't we implemented any of the named suggestions which I sent back in February of 2016? And that I followed up on every week for the next seven months?” I wondered, “Did you actually read anything I wrote? Last February I called attention to the fact that our website is full of glaring errors. The video is the wrong aspect ratio for the frame object containing it and the form object beside it is unavailable. It makes us look like idiots. So fix it! The punny captions to our videos are embarrassing and I sent you new captions back in May. Use them! I sent you a perfect example of a competing regional app publisher with an awesome website. Do you like it? Then hire a web guy and make one!”

I’d framed and itemized the things we need to do. Unfortunately, our CEO never actually reads my emails, and when I mention that I’d taken the time to compose and send one, he asks me to sum it up for him on the spot so that he doesn’t have to read it.

Several times he’s called me into his office to show him how to do something in Outlook or how to save a PDF. His Outlook account is nearly 2TB in size with over four hundred unread messages. Clients phone me several times a week asking if their orders are completed, only to discover that they are still collecting dust in his Inbox.

But I’m sure he knows what’s best.

Aren't you glad this is all now past tense and receding in your rearview mirror as fast as you can press down the pedal?

I've gradually come to realise that email is one of the least effective ways of communicating in the workplace. Simply because so many people don't fucking bother to check their inbox.

Words cannot express the weight which has been lifted from me leaving that job. The CEO kept me on as an IT consultant, but I'm freed from all the garbage I had to deal with on a daily basis. Thanks for tuning in!

ENTRY 6: Do This So That I Don’t Have to Pay the Janitor
 

Like most small businesses, it is critical that each employee wear many hats to keep the place running. To date, I’ve served as a customer service rep, a prepress designer, technical support ranging from network troubleshooting to building new towers for the office, app development and publishing, developed solutions for paperless workflow automation, social media manager, marketing, commercial video design and voiceover work, blogger (researching and drafting content and publishing it to various networks), and website maintenance. But over the last few years, the majority of these responsibilities have dried up as we have no customers, so I’ve now been demoted to operating the presses and to bindery work like assembling hundreds of folders or stuffing thousands of envelopes.

And in the interest of saving money in the short-term, our CEO decisively abstains from investing in affordable, industry-standard equipment, opting instead for soul-crushing manual labor. So while any other professional print production facility would be expected to have a device called a finisher to rapidly and consistently fold and staple packets and booklets, I have the rare fortune of being told to perform this monotonous task by hand for hours and hours at a time. Just this afternoon (and for the last several days), I’ve been charged with the task of hand-collating and hand stapling 1,725 packets of paper. (Once again - that college degree really shines in this environment.)

Originally, our CEO had the brilliant idea of hiring our janitor to do the bindery work. But lately, he’s decided that he can save even more by having me do it in place of the janitor. And his sharp-minded cost-saving strategies don’t stop there. He’s instructed me to leave off lights in the building which we don’t really need, and he kicked me out of my office to lease the room out to an elderly couple for extra income. The downside of this is that I now have a desk in the middle of a giant print production floor, where I am bombarded by the whirring, buzzing, and CLACK-CLACK-CLACKing of hydraulic industrial cutters and folders all day long while I try to work.

But it was his latest cost-saving notion which was the real treat - a 40-year-old laminating machine’s power supply failed while I was doing laminating work, melting the power cable and pouring black smoke from the machine. But instead of paying a repairman, he trimmed a spare power cord he found in the back of the shop and put me right back to work. (Unfortunately this posed an electrical hazard as the cable wasn't rated for the correct voltage, and the entire socket melted shortly thereafter.)

But do this so that I don’t have to pay the janitor.

It conjures up images from Brazil.

It's been ages since I've seen Brazil - definitely revisiting it tonight!

I'm a little confused. Not a big confused - that would take up too much space and cost extra to rent, but a little confused. Is this your new job you're talking about? As you say "just this afternoon" it seems it is, yet I thought you told us you moved to a much better job where you were much happier? Is this now turning out not to be the case??