At work, it's quite rare that we lose a significant amount of Production time due to Bank Holidays and the like. In previous years, back when we were only tackling six magazines a month, we'd barely notice.
Now, of course, we're running twelve magazines a month... So Easter is causing something of a problem. Here's the short version: Four magazines in four working days.
That's right. Deadline #1: Yesterday. Deadline #2: Today. Deadline #3: Tuesday. Deadline #4: Wednesday.
The first was easy enough... Small magazine, decent sales team, problematic editor. It went out on time. The second - mine - was bizarre. Never before have I spent so much time working on my next two magazines before putting the current one to bed. In some ways, it was good. After all, technically, it puts me ahead. On the other hand, what the hell went wrong? Why did everything take so damned long to get to me? OK, the obvious answer is that the alleged 'senior designer' who dealt with the bulk of the editorial (while the magazine's lead designer churned out a feature) is a workshy moron who claimed that he had to work slower because it wasn't his magazine and he wasn't familiar with it ("meh-meh-meeeehhh-meh... boo-hoo") while, in fact, he wasn't actually doing much because he spends most of his time yapping with whichever dippy little girl is willing to give him the time of day. For that reason, I didn't start getting signed-off editorial until after lunch. Oh, that, and the editor really can't take the pressure... of 30 pages of editorial a month, even though she barely writes anything herself.
And whatever editorial I did get through was, frankly, sub-par. This guy doesn't even bother colour-correcting images. We're running Photoshop CS2, and he can't even bring himself to click on Image > Adjustments > Auto Colour, let alone fiddle with the damned curves, levels, colour balance, etc. like a bloody professional. There was one photo of a group of kids, laying down in a loose circle, heads together, upon which he'd set a white headline with black body copy. I took one look at that photo and adjusted it so that the white t-shirts half the kids were wearing were actually white, and then had to make the headline black because the whole photo had become that much lighter.
This guy calls himself a Senior Designer, people.
He seems to believe that entitles him to do very little, but claim more money than other designers, and then palm most of his work off on them.
On a vaguely similar note, we have someone in sales who fancies herself a Marketing Genius, and convinced a client that his target audience was female. This client's line of business? Car hire. Specifically, Sportscar hire.
I'm not kidding.
She's confusing 'target audience of product' with 'primary audience of magazine', you see. And because of her sharp insight, she wishes to dictate the design of the ad... but, since she's not a marketing genius, or a designer, this simply leads the client to seek a redesign every month.
Discussing this with my boss, it became quite obvious that I have more marketing know-how than this silly bint.
But I digress.
Today's magazine went off OK, and only about half an hour 'late' (that is, at 6pm). Next week is where it all goes pear-shaped. We've got a tiny magazine to go out on Tuesday, but less than half of it is done so far, and it's the same flaky editor as yesterday's magazine. Not a big deal, as it's so small in total, I could do the whole thing in one afternoon. Of course, I'm not working on that, I'm working on the one that goes out on Wednesday, which is about twice the size... and half as full. Great chunks of the magazine are literally bare of advertising. Harsh choices must be made...
But it doesn't end there... On Friday, we still have to get out the monthly colossus. Weighing in at over 200 pages on average, it won't be pretty.
But it won't be my problem, either...
Supposedly I shall soon have a job title once more. Since the 'departure' of my cyberstalker, I have been functioning without, since his job was made redundant, and we actually had the same job title. The letter confirming my promotion to Production Manager has been written, seen by my boss, and should be in the post next week. There should also be a fairly sweet pay-rise attached. Not that I'm much fussed by that, but I certainly intend to earn the extra by cracking down on workshy morons like the one mentioned above. Timekeeping will be discussed. Phone usage will be discussed. Excessive, non-work-related yapping will sure-as-hell be discussed.
If they think our Group Production Manager is a fascist... wait till they get a load of me.
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