Really bad subject to bring up with me, really bad subject to bring up at work at the moment. To make matters worse, we'd had an announcement today of five promotions within Sales - we now have four Commercial Managers (only a couple of years ago we made do with one) and a new Senior Salesperson. At least two of those promotions are the result of boarding the Brown-nose Express.
Basically, my designer is getting married and his girlfriend thinks he should be earning more. That probably tells you everything you need to know about their relationship (as in who wears the trousers).
I can understand where he's coming from, but he's already had it explained to him by my boss that he won't get any kind of pay rise till next April. I explained it to him again anyway, trying to put it into a bit of perspective (the trouble our boss went to to get everyone the right pay rise this year, Senior Designer redundancies purely to cut costs, etc), but I could already see him trying to figure out what he was going to tell his girlfriend.
He complained that he felt he was setting too many ads - my boss later asked if I thought this was his 'subtle' way of complaining about one of the other designers on my team - so I explained to him that no-one is employed to set editorial, it's all about the ads, and the fun stuff is just a sweetener. It looked for a moment as if he was going to argue - and I'm sure I will have that argument with the other designer sooner or later - but he didn't.
He'd been considering writing a letter to the MD, but I very swiftly talked him out of that, saying it was the quick way to be shown the door. Kicking up a fuss is not a good way to ensure better money where we work, let alone in the current economic climate.
And because it had been quite a sour conversation - much talk of Office Politics on my part, and much determining exactly what I could and could not tell him - I decided to switch to a new topic once we were done with that.
I've noticed he doodles when idle. He's actually rather good. Far better, in fact, that many of the webcomics out there. I told him as much, pointed him at a couple of useful links, and showed him that there is serious money to be made for those with talent.
He's got the talent... but he tends to procrastinate, and is generally quite lazy. As my boss said later, he'll charge through piles of ads when necessary, but he works lazily and sloppily. While I was away recently, much of his 'finished' editorial work got thrown back at him because he hadn't turned images from RGB to CMYK, which is pretty much as sloppy as it gets.
I'd like to think he'll give webcomics a whirl.
I'd like to think his girlfriend would be supportive if he did.
I'm an optimist at heart.
When we finished talking, he had a smile on his face - mission accomplished! - and I half-joked that perhaps I should shift into Human Resources. He agreed, suggesting that I take out an ad in Classified (as a counsellor?!)
Really must talk to our HR Officer when next she's in.
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