I HAVE WORKED WITH YOU, AND YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE
Updated 01/29/09

A show of hands. Would you rather be at a cubicle for 9 hours a day, or would you rather be sitting under a tree with a friend drinking champagne and discussing things you enjoy? Your right, I picked the cubicle too :-)

I get especially cheesed when someone shows up at work intending to get ahead by making everyone's lives miserable, and could care less about anyone but themselves. Life's short, so I just hate these idiots who don't care what effect they have on others, especially when everyone in their heart of hearts would rather be somewhere else. If you're looking for my usual glib writings, then you should probably read elsewhere. This will be a continuing post until I've rid myself any thoughts of these fuckheads. Let's proceed!

SKEC-HERS!
Posted 01/29/09
When I was starting out as a designer (circa 1996), I got an offer from Skec-hers to work in their web department. The problem was it was 62 miles from my house, and would be at least 3 & 1/2 hours blown on the freeway everyday. After pondering all the negatives, I decided to go for it since, if this place was on my resume, I could pretty much write my own ticket if I stayed a year or two.

My first day there I get introduced to the other two web designers. The first guy I find is hugely talented, but was just demoted from their absolutely magnificent print department since he couldn't get along with anybody. They instead let him hire his spiky-haired punker friend (Designer #2) to form the web department. Problem was, punker guy used to work at a skate shop, and knows nothing at all about the web. Designer #1 has advised them they should hire me so I can teach his friend the web, basically so he doesn't have to. A great vote of confidence for me, since I assumed they were completely blown away by my work.

By Friday of the first week, I note that no ones done any work, and ask if any projects are coming up. #1 assures me that they have some serious projects, some of which make them work late nights on weekends (not actually because they jerk off all week and have to catch up or anything.) In 5 days we've accomplished nothing. I also note that these boneheads come in high on bong loads every morning, and spend all their time surfing for music and bathing suit pix. If I was 17 I'd be in freakin nirvana, but I'm 35 now, and this completely sucks.

Monday, we sit down a meeting with one of the young VP's regarding our next big redesign, and I (and everyone else) can see he's got the gaping hole in the middle of his septum that heavy coke users get, and his pupils are the size of purely theoretical particles. He's hungover and looks like absolute dogshit. I now find out his Dad is the owner of all of this, and he and his similarly fucked up brothers are all VP's there. He starts the meeting by talking about the upcoming company Hotel Party, where he expects they'll be oodles of c-listers, rock musicians and porn stars to chat with, then he turns over the meeting to Designer #1. As #1 starts talking in his stoned manner, I notice said VP has his hand behind the neck of the girl sitting next to him, whose in charge of their 'Lifestyle's' website. He's calmly stroking her neck, and she's got her hands jammed between her knees and looking like she's gonna jump out of her seat. She actually looks like an unhip Christian chick, but behind the scenes she's the voice of what's cool for a nation of fashionable teenagers.

The meeting finally ends and we exit through the main offices where the VP's are. Now we hear numerous phone calls, all with what I envision retail New Yorker big-wigs sound like, all screaming at people on speaker phone, and liberally dropping 'Fuck' and 'Cocksucker' whenever possible. If this is the big leagues, then I'd rather work at Del Taco.

After coming back from lunch and finding a pile of nail clippings in front of my keyboard (apparently they figured out I was less than thrilled with them), I called my old place of business, got a 5K raise to come back, and that was that. I left them a Dear John letter, and to this day don't put them on my resume, which is the only reason I took the job in the first place. It's like jumping Heidi Klum's bones and never being able to tell anybody, only not quite as radical.

CARRIE TAYLOR - I HAVE NEVER LOVED ANOTHER AS I LOVE YOU NOW (JUST KIDDING - BLOW ME!)
Posted 01/29/09
I was designing for an entertainment firm that had started to post some heavy losses, so my boss created some new positions to try and bail out the company. Though my boss was directly over me, she created a position between us for a person who would also be over a few other positions (basically so my boss could have time to do other things, like save the company.)

Carrie came from a firm regarded (at least design-wise) to be the laughing stock of the Internet. We all decided to give her the benefit of the doubt though, and she was greeted warmly when she got there. As we found out, other than knowing every bit of industry jargon, she really didn't know much of anything. She had tremendous conversational skills, was pretty nice looking, and had no fear of anyone above her (which immediately endeared her to my boss), but she didn't actually have any tangible anything. Her own website was a mess, and what made it worse was when we realized she didn't actually know how to use any design software, which meant everything on her site was created by someone else. The capper was when, given an offer of Mac to use, she took it and parked it next to her PC (instead of just using the Mac), so she had both Machines hogging all the room on her desk. Mac's made people appear hip in her opinion, so, even though she couldn't use one, there it was on her desk. She used the PC for work and the $4500 Mac was used to display sticky notes and her figurine collections.

After a month people working for her were ready to mutiny. She was meeting crazy, and we were each having 3 personal meetings a week with her "Just to see what's up." She never had a suggestion or a plan for anything, and would smolder if you'd ask her if she actually had one. I had a week in the hospital during this period, and she never once asked how I was doing when I got back. The first words we had was her grilling me about a deadline, and to suggest I may be responsible for her missing, "More than one" of them. If you could legally waste one person a lifetime, she would have been in serious trouble.

Our finish came when a hyper-talented co-worker wanted to bitch about her, so I took him out so he could vent, and did he ever. We took a 2 hour lunch and he ranted the entire time about how in 25 years he'd never worked with someone so unprofessional, laying out one stupid thing she did after another. When we got back I realized I'd missed one of Carrie's 'What's up!' meetings, tried to apologize, and was greeted with "This is unacceptable!" at least five times, each more hysterical than the last one.

Minutes later I called a design firm I'm a fan of, got a verbal start date, then walked over to Human Resources & said, "See ya!" It took my boss less than eight months to realize she'd hired a fraud. The designer who replaced me told me after a heated exchange with her, he said to her face, and I quote, "FUCK YOU. You say another word to me and I walk." Carrie got canned shortly thereafter. After she got canned, she posted some woe-is-me rants on her MySpace, all of course blaming the company, since apparently there wasn't a mirror nearby. I hope she's gotten a clue at some point, but I totally doubt it. People like Carrie Taylor are the dictionary definition of when they hire someone with Sarah Palin's charm and venom, along with her vaporware skills and talent.

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