And yet, here we are with the bedroom as complete as it can be till the hall gets sorted out and the kitchen almost complete (I had a phone call today from the salesman, asking how I'd like my cupboard handles fitted - horizontally or vertically), and the only photos I managed to take were of the early stages of fitting the flooring in the bedroom.
So much for that idea.
In other news, work spirals into new levels of crappiness. We have an interesting new system whereby the Commercial Managers now have full responsibility for the content of the magazines. Rather than collecting proofs and sending them to the Printers, we now hand them to the Commercial Managers, who collate them into a book and sign them off. Only when they are happy do we send the magazine to print.
Thus, if the wrong ad goes in and they've signed it off, it ain't a Production error. If a client has a colour requirement, but didn't send a colour proof (as stated in our Terms & Conditions) and then complains about the colour, it ain't a Production error. If pages somehow go in in the wrong order (as happened on one of my magazines recently, because I can't have been concentrating) but they get signed off in that order, it ain't a Production error.
Of course, in practice, we can't do that, and we end up sending pages as they're completed (pretty much as we've always done), but now we have the added hassle of the CMs badgering for more pages.
One, for example, asked me to start handing stuff over for his magazine (deadline this Wednesday) last Friday, the press day for one of my other magazines. I flatly refused - there was nothing to give him at that time, but I was too busy with my current magazine to do anything else.
He complained to the MD that I wasn't doing my job.
My manager got called in, and she and the MD explained - slowly, so as not to frighten him - that this is perfectly normal. The actual production cycle for each magazine is effectively three days. It can be no different, because each team works on six magazines per month. While the CMs are 'responsible' for a set of magazines (2 CMs in our office, one in the North office, one in the South office), they tend only to work on one or two at most.
They somehow failed to realise that Production is a busy department, and that the time we have to devote to the magazine as a team is very limited. Individual designers get 2 weeks to work on editorial for each of their magazines, but they also have to work on 2 sets of Classified each.
The maths is simple. Really it is. Six magazines per team of three Designers, two Copy Controllers and one Production Manager/General Dogsbody equals not a lot of time.
I also had to point out to one of the Salesmen on Friday that staying past 5.30... or even 7.30... is nothing new to us. Once they've signed everything off and left the office for the day, we often have more than an hour's work still to process. This, too, came as a surprise.
Next, one of the newbie Copy Controllers tried to resign, citing my 'unhelpful attitude' as the reason. Supposedly I'd dismissed a request for help. Not how I remember it, but my manager seems to think my memory is faulty, did not listen to my side, and gave me a bollocking. Then later gave me another bollocking over her "grammatically correct" instruction on proofing.
That said, she has a very painful ear infection, and isn't quite back to normal after her husband's rather serious health scare, so I'm inclined to overlook some of her shoutiness.
Here's to looking for a new job in the new year...
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