I've freelanced for a while as well as have pulled a staff job now and again over the past ten years and in the course of picking up portfolio-boosting work, I've also encountered management that is so poor it ranks only slightly better than the management at the A&P. I've had the god-complex managers, the hazing managers, and the managers who have gone as far as set up their staff to mask their own failures.
The lengths I have seen co-workers and managers antagonize and sabotage others has gotten to the point where my stories are so beyond what many of my friends have experienced that my tales have become their dinner conversation, and I have even gone so far as to forward the more inane emails to outsiders to show that I'm not sharing tales but am portraying real-life office situations.
My latest gig has been one of the most hostile environments in which I've worked. It's not just the passive-aggressive manager who doesn't want to be a manager unless it's for "fun" stuff like bringing food to a staff meeting, or the de-facto appointment of an ill-suited co-manager who thinks it's their job to kick everyone's ass while not really understanding what it is they're kicking them for, but the added fact that despite months of emails asking for guidance and help so as to keep foundering inter-office relationships from becoming irretrievably broken, being forced to defend my existence to my account team and getting smacked down for asking for time to do my job.
This is a company where managers do not talk cross-department. It is a company of blame, backstabbing, and backbiting with no-one understanding or expressing and understanding that their jobs are possible and successful because of the work of those by whom they are surrounded.
Management needs to encourage, correct, facilitate, and inspire, and at the same time ensure that deliverables exceed expectations and clients are beyond pleased. The last two take care of themselves when the others are tended to on a consistent basis. Rallying "Town Hall" meetings by senior partners as an attempt to make a company function cannot compensate for this most basic of failures.
So linked with the office angst that includes being totally let down by the department head, is being surrounded by people who feel they are the smartest people out there with sly comments that were smart in high school and indicated an "otherness," but, which, in a corporate setting among people who've been working company jobs for at least 5 years are as idiotic as they are inappropriate.
If these individuals were as smart as they purport to be, they wouldn't be in the dirt with me. From what I can tell, their key talents include making a lot of noise to elevate themselves and demand attention. Thing is, the truly talented people with whom I've worked don't behave this way. If anything, they strive to see themselves as contibutors to a greater good as opposed to the sole reason for a project's success.
This is not to say the less vocal don't know their value. Quite the opposite: they are aware of their talent but their confidence and skill suffuse their work instead of filling the atmosphere with demands to be adored and petted every five minutes.
Freelance is good. Permalance, if you like the people you're working with is better, But sometimes there's pressure to convert and if you're unfortunate enough to actually believe the crap the main department guy tells you about what accounts you'll get to work on even a good situation can turn bad very very quickly.
Which is the latest hole I've dug.
That, and, well, I needed health insurance, but so does most of the country so the only thing making me special at this point is that I got to opt out of coverage-free status.
And that's kind of the bind --- how much crap work and lying can a person take and is the ulcer it induces worth the insurance that pays for the treatment?
So today I dived into my tax records. Not too much of a disaster, so all is off to a good start.
This week was the Feds, next week is NYS and NYC. Hooray.
