Hide and Seek

Since the foldaway chairs at the flat have been causing my lower back no end of pain, I decided I'd try to fast-track moving my chair over from the house. It's a basic office chair, but it gives back support at the right place, and its height is adjustable.

Accomplishing this feat turned out to be rather more complicated than it needed to be.

Firstly, the chair was at the desk in my room - no surprise - but the desk was blocked off by my bed... and the bed was laden with all the boxes I'd transferred from the back bedroom, having emptied (so very nearly completely emptied) the display cabinets.

I tried dismantling the chair where it stood, but that turned out to be impossible. The bed was unloaded and raised, so that I could finish the job, and actually extricate the chair from its rather cramped location.

Of course, having done all that, I had to go and lose the screw that fastens the backrest in place underneath the seat. I spent the best part of an hour searching for it, turning my room over several times in the process.

And then, of course, it turned up in one of the first places I looked - underneath my CD racks - and where I'd looked several times over the course of the hour. It was playing with my mind.

So now I'm back at the flat, sitting on a comfy chair. Hurrah.

I should probably attempt to sum up the week while I'm still able to think tonight.

Work carried on being crap. My Friday deadline, which looked easily met around mid-week, suddenly went pear-shaped on Press Day. It didn't help that my regular contact at the Printers was on holiday, and the two people covering for him were very skittish. I guess our crazy Press Days are so 'normal' to our usual guy, he didn't think to brief them on the fact that we occasionally add or remove 8, 16... hell, even 24 pages on Press Day... or the fact that the order of pages in the property section is subject to change right up to the last minute.

The Commercial Manager tried desperately to put Press Day back to next Tuesday (Monday being already taken), but the Printers had the job scheduled for Friday evening, so that was out of the question.

It wasn't pleasant, but we managed it... and were out by 8pm - a whole hour earlier than my counterpart's most recent disastrous Press Day.

The worst part of it all was that my concentration wasn't at its best. I'd been up late Thursday night, letting myself get distracted by teh interwebs, so I was very tired, and I'd been exchanging geeky emails at irregular intervals with the salesperson who, on Wednesday, revealed herself to be serious geek and Penny Arcade fan. Subjects ranged from videogames (console/PC/Mac, specifics like Neverwinter Nights tactics and Baldur's Gate 2 characters) to television (largely Doctor Who and its terrible Easter 'special'). When I asked if she'd listed to the Penny Arcade/PVP D&D 4e Playtest Podcasts, she said she hadn't... for fear of turning into an Ubergeek.

Not quite sure how I should take that...

Thankfully, such irreverence petered out by Friday, but really wouldn't have made much impact on the day if it hadn't. The problems were completely outside of Production... In fact, whenever I made a suggestion to the magazine manager, he acted on it almost immediately. The problems were all down to shaky bookings in Property (this, I hear rumoured, will be the last month we employ a freelancer - the Commercial Manager has convinced the MD that we need an in-house, accountable Property rep to make things work smoothly), and several clients who just couldn't be contacted.

It's actually heartbreaking to see how these magazines are going. People are trying, but they lack the training to do things properly (not to mention, in many cases, the skill to do things well), so these magazines - some of which have been going for over 20 years under various managements - are falling apart. Once strong brands have been undermined by poor selling and a lack of regard for the magazines. Far too many of the salespeople only see their sales targets, and completely overlook the product they produce... it's not just sales patter that our magazines are read and enjoyed by many.

And it's not just our magazines. Another sales team from one of the other branches of the company sits behind me. An argument broke out between two of the salespeople last week when one of the undersold to a client of the other, who'd been on holiday:

"I get £300 from them, now you've sold them in for £100 while I was on holiday," complained one.
"Well, if you think you can get £300 from them, by all means do," offered the other.
"You've already sold them in lower than I do, so I won't be able to get £300 out of them now" pointed out the first.
"Well, if you were going to contact them, why didn't you make notes on [new system]?" countered the second.
"I made notes on [old system]."
"That's not used anymore."
"Oh yes it is."
"Oh no it isn't."
etc, etc.

All this, and we're ditching one of our Printers, having had far too many late deliveries from them in recent months.

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