Off Step

Today was not my day.

It just started off bad. I lay in bed this morning feeling great and refreshed, until I looked at the time. 9:04 am. I need to be AT my desk between 9:00 and 9:30. 9:04 am. A quick shower, deodorant and some toothpaste and I'm out the door and into my car. 9:18 am.

I live seven miles from work and hit two ridiculously long red lights. I'm also traveling a lot faster than your average law enforcement official would call acceptable - not dangerously maneuvering - but still. I pull into the lot. 9:28 am - cool!

Three spaces down from my dirty little Jetta is the production Team Director (the boss of my boss) and she's waving to me. "You've got really good timing," she says. Behind her, in the back of her car, are donuts – four or five dozen of them. She needs help carting them in, and I just got drafted. Nothing I can do, really. I don't mind helping (especially considering one of those donuts is stomach bound), but it kinda shot the whole sprinting into the building thing I'd had planned. I grab three bright pink bakers' boxes and march into the office. Deposit the cargo, and jog over to my desk. 9:31:15 am.

Now, it really wasn't a big deal. The company's laid back and I'm in the good graces. There's no disciplinary action, no stern looks, no harm, no foul. The Team Director even corrected my time after a quick e-mail. I just hate being late.

An hour or two passes and I take care of some routine stuff. I'm the Quality Assurance artist, in addition to my other duties, so I spend a good chunk of my day (particularly my mornings) correcting orders that have misprinted (correcting typos, researching tech issues, placing color-edited images and the like). All nice and smooth. 11:45 am. Log out for lunch.

Now I start the fun task. Our company provides digital templates for graphic designers, a starting point to build your layout. They're all pre-sized with guides, swatches and labels. Having built all the previous templates, and knowing more about the templates than anyone else, I get the job of creating more templates for some of our new offerings. Three new products, each with four different templates, in six different applications. That's 72 new files, if you're counting. Monotonous, yeah, but it needs to be done. Welcome to template hell.

1:28 pm. I get a call from a client I was helping last week. He's a photographer, and had placed a batch of twelve orders. He's a very nice guy, but very particular about the details, the cards being a personal marketing piece for his business. I ended up making change after change on the batch, little tweaks and such, trying to get them just perfect. The series printed on Wednesday afternoon, and I made every effort to get these done right. His assistant just picked up the cards and noticed a typo on one of the pieces. My fault. He's very cool about it, sharing responsibility for missing the error on the proof. I fix the layout and state we'll get it reprinted Monday.

Back to the templates. 2:30 pm. Brain numb. Hurts to think.

A quick meeting until 3:00 pm, and I'm starting to get back higher brain functions.

But wait! More templates to finish. Motor skills fading.

5:25 pm. Mark, the photographer, calls back. There's more problems. One of the images is higher than it should be (also my fault - I'm really not this bad) and the color's too dark on ALL of the cards. No problem. We'll get it fixed. I apologize for his disappointment, and let him know that we'll get the color reviewed and give him a call back on Monday. He's understandably flustered, and asks – pleads – if there's anything I can do tonight. He doesn't want to have this hanging over his head all weekend. Mark knows that the cards won't print tonight, but he just needs to know that someone's doing something, that he isn't lost in the process. Everyone I need to talk to is gone for the weekend.

I end up scrambling for the materials and flagging down one of the color guys, literally on his way out the door. We take a look at the batch. The press is on, so it looks like either (1) the proof he received is off or (2) the edits we made are just off. Doomed from the start, I'm thinking. The worst part is that we don't have our copy of the proof anymore and even after twenty minutes I don't have any good answers.

I call back Mark, worried that I can't give him any solace. Luckily, he's just happy that someone followed up. He can sleep better, especially after I assure him that we'll find an amicable solution. I ask him to FedEx in his proofs and we'll get the ball rolling. He's grateful for the attention, and has the time to get these suckers reprinted. Monday's problem. 5:50 pm.

I drive home, stressed out.

6:10 pm. There's a notice taped to my door. "90 Day Notice of Intention to Sell as Condominiums." My apartment complex got sold and the new management has decided to stop renting. Lots of legal text and multiple signatures required. My roommate and I were planning on moving anyways, but it looks like the management dates don't quite jive with our timetable. This might work out poorly. Walking into a large multi-page notice taped to your door…

Tonight was the first night that I've walked straight to the fridge for a beer, before I even put down my keys.

I'm currently on my third MGD, and currently decompressing.