WORK LIFE:

After six years of working for Tower Printing, my boss has merged to be a part of a design company called Tactix Creative. Both companies are small, a total staff count of fourteen. We all work under the same roof and our work sort of intermixes except on the paperwork/billing side. We've been growing and becoming more an more busy. The little building that once housed Tower Printing has become much too small and much to crowded with people and junk acquired over the past 20 years of business. My boss has had non-stop anger management issues since dealing with the headaches of taking on a second company. He's got his feet in both companies and is suffering serious growing pains. The way I see it is that he's still got the "mom and pops" shop mentality. The companies have now grown and that sort of management is not working because it's requiring him to take on too much for one person. While he realized he's got too much for one person to take on, he can't seem to move past letting go of some of those burdens and trusting others with the responsibilities. Until he can learn to trust and learn that he really can't do it all and live to see life past the age of 50 at this rate, we must deal with his mood swings. At my previous job I had an art director that I'd really enjoyed working with, but then things began to change in his world. He became very unhappy and we all know "crap" runs downhill. It became very hard to keep your chin up in such a negative environment. He became so grumpy that you couldn't tell if he was mad at you or mad at someone else. It didn't really matter, he always appeared mad at all I did and it became very hard to accomplish my work and collaborate with him on projects. I was walking on pins an needles and coming home in tears every night. My parents encouraged me to consider quitting the job. I left the job and was unemployed for three months until I found my current job. I would later find out that my art director's moods indeed were not caused by myself, but some really messy personal stuff in his life. When I last met with him, he'd managed to come through a very messy situation alive and was the guy I really had enjoyed working with. My current situation at work reminds me a great deal of that situation. My boss is ornery all the time and I'm unsure if he just hates me or life it's self. This time I know that the reason behind his madness is that he's expanding his business. It still doesn't make it any easier to cope with the emotions at work and remember that I'm really not the person he hates. Grrrrr...

We'll be moved to our new location mid-week next week. This new location will be a very new look. We will look like a design agency. We will look like we really do know what we are doing. Hopefully it will be a fresh start and we can all really enjoy the new space and the new feel of a brand new building to work in. I'll be glad to not be sitting across a partition from my boss anymore and hearing discussions not meant for my ears. I think I'll be able to focus more on my work than trying to shut out all the stuff I'm not supposed to hear. I'll be sitting side by side the only other full time female in the office who also shares my same name, only she spells it with only one "e", Dena. It's been a life saver to have another female there to relate to. Oh, and we've had Foresight do all the bells and whistles to the place. They've got a fancy alarm system set up and we are going to have two media rooms. I'm hearing that there is one 90" screen in one media room right now. We will have music piped throughout the offices so I no longer have to huddle up to my tin cans I call computer speakers to hear music. We even have the music piped into the bathrooms. This one is a little beyond my comprehension. Volume controllers in the bathroom only leads my mind into worlds I suppose it shouldn't. Why would you need volume controllers for the music in the bathrooms? This office was designed by my two bosses and they've got music piped into the restrooms, but nowhere to put the toilet paper supply. Maybe this is only a problem I see as a female. All in all the new office should be very nice. It's getting there that will be a rough road. I hate to move my own stuff, this moving a whole business is crazy!

All in all, I'm sticking with the company for now. It's job security. Plus we really do have a great staff to feed off one anther as far as design goes and learn and grow. There is hope that once we have room to grow they will be able to replace me as the production designer to move me to be a full-time designer under Tactix. I've been really into helping out with illustration stuff, though it's a small side of the lump design stuff we do.

Well, that's work for you.