Truth vs. Belief

I find it fascinating that fourteen years of experience in the ad business and a lifetime of organizational skills can suddenly be "misrepresentation".

Sadly, it wasn't my "misrepresentation", but the description of the job itself that wasn't right. Although perhaps it would be better to say that the description was accurate to a point, but the goals changed on a nearly daily basis, making any kind of success in the job an impossibility for anyone. I completely understand now why so many other people have either walked out on the job or were let go after such ridiculously short periods of time.

The real problem was that the goals changed every couple of days. First it was a 90-day probation/training period. Then the week after I started, despite being thrown into another huge project headfirst, I was expected to already know everything going on and figure out an intelligent schedule for their entire team. (I'm NOT complaining about the hard work... I much prefer it to sitting there and twiddling my thumbs. I want the challenge of making something out of nothing and I'm very, very good at it, as my previous jobs can easily show.)

Reviews of each project with the boss were mandatory before being distributed to the team... again, no problem. Except that there was always the excuse that the boss was too busy to deal with it... or just flat walked out in the middle of a meeting. The office had a "no cell phones during work hours" policy, but I can't tell you how many of those same meetings were interrupted by personal cell phone calls. A serious double-standard.

Because of the inability to get any projects approved and therefore started, there were times when some of the creative staff didn't have anything to work on. This always brought on a HUGE rant and lots of finger pointing, even though the blame lay in one place only. The times we actually managed to get through a meeting and small portions of a project were approved to give to the artists, the next day it became an issue again. Once it was reported to the boss that a project was given to the creative team to keep them busy, another rant ensued, with more finger-pointing and insistence that the artists were completely incompetent and unable to think for themselves in any way without being micromanaged and treated like they were three years old. (This came despite the insistence on "good" days that *everyone* who was working there was only hired because they were talented and very intelligent. The "best of the best", so to speak.) As a result we ended up back at square one, with no approved projects and a still-angry boss because now they were going to be idle again.

I provided everything that was asked for in the position and more. I was told that I didn't provide any kind of schedule, but I provided more than one, in very detailed methods, including the "working backwards" schedule that was initially requested (ie: working out deadlines by finding the final due date and going backwards with each piece of the project to determine when each segment would have to be due in order for the next to progress). I gave them schedules in Excel, detailed descriptions in Word and calendars in MS Project, over and over again. It was enough of a challenge just to figure out some of the pieces of each project, in order to make an INTELLIGENT schedule and not have to revise it every two days (which was apparently another huge sin there... having to redo any work at all).

Not that a schedule mattered in any way. Deadlines were ignored as if they didn't matter, more finger-pointing at the clients who "didn't know what they wanted". Every time a client sent in new or requested information to help a project go forward, additional time was tacked on to the end rather than meeting the original deadlines. There were some projects that had been paid for up front and yet had been "extended" this way for nearly a year (sometimes despite not needing any "new" information). Yet somehow, it was always someone else's fault, but never the agency's.

I was told that I didn't know what the artists were doing, but I have to confess that a part of it was that I didn't agree with the micromanaging, "our employees are stupid" method of working. I was supposed to be their boss and get the best work out of them. Making them despise me for the difficult requests that were made of me wasn't the way to do it. I wasn't there to be their best friend, but I wasn't there to make enemies of the entire creative staff, either. I was told ahead of time that they'd be difficult and surly when I asked things of them, but that never happened. Not once. They *always* delivered what was requested without attitude or talk-back. At least to me. I've always found that if you go in expecting people to be pissed off and impossible to work with, they'll start to fulfill your expectations. If you give them ground to actually create and treat them like thinking, feeling people, they'll give you more than you expect.

There were admittedly several occasions that I really didn't know what they were doing, either because I was brand new and had no idea what they were *expected* to do... or else my job was overruled when other projects were given to them that I had no idea of and no control over. Things were shuffled around behind my back after I gave them projects. I had a schedule down, yet it was constantly yanked out from under me and then changed. There was a constant need to know what everyone was doing every microsecond of the day. The only real solution to this would be to remove the offices, put them all in cubicles close together, have cameras placed in every cube and monitor every second of what they did all day long. Welcome to prison.

I commend the rest of the staff there, because they were attempting to be professionals despite the issues. I only hope they don't get canned in a few weeks either, because I heard more than a few complaints about all of them, from how much they were making to their attitudes to their incompetence, but only ever from the boss and that opinion is the only one that matters (even though the pretense of asking for other opinions was sometimes made, in the end it never made a difference).

Sadly, they don't need the staff they have in order to "manage" anyone or anything. The rest of the employees were so cowed by fear of the tirades that no effort was ever made to speak up about anything that was a problem or anything that was disagreed with. Because of that, all they truly need in order to function is the boss and a few contractors, because no one else will ever satisfy the constantly changing needs and the inability to let go enough and let the "intelligent" staff actually do their jobs. The irrational demand for absolute perfection went so far beyond reasonable that it was impossible to meet for anyone. I'm a perfectionist myself, but I also recognize that sometimes you have to redo things to get them to that point. Sometimes you have to have a false start to reach that zenith or else you just stagnate and don't produce anything new or original... and then your competitors start to take over. It doesn't matter if you have the secret recipe and it doesn't matter if you're the only one who provides a service to a certain level. If you act like you have everyone by the balls and you can't be touched no matter how poorly you treat everyone else, you will eventually fail and fail spectacularly. At some point, customers will prefer to go to a "lower" quality just because it's not such a pain in the ass to deal with.

As for me, I'm actually *very* happy to be out of there. It was an unhealthy situation, and more than one of the employees was making themselves ill to try to keep up with the circular logic that rules the place. I'm glad I'm out before I was made sick over it... and it wouldn't have taken long to burn out. I don't want to be burned out. I want to still be able to say I love what I do. I've loved what I do for fourteen years, and there's no reason to stop now. I'm more than willing to put in the hours for the right job... and I have. I'm more than willing to put in the blood and the sweat and the tears... and I have.

I won't ever be the person who has to spend hours every day exercising to vent my frustration and overwhelming stress because I'll still have a life and still have time and the emotional reserves to actually enjoy my family. *I* will still be happy with what I'm doing for a living and never have to look back with regret because I was only ever in it for the money. Sadly, I realized two weeks into the job that this was only going to be a "money" job, because there was no way I'd be able to pour my soul into something that physically and emotionally draining without irrevocably damaging myself in the process.

Despite the fact that I really could have used the money for at least a little while to cushion our relocation, I'm glad I'm out.

And that is absolutely the truth.