Seven Out

Friday just sucked. Like Office Space sucked. The overall volume of work has picked up lately, which is normal for this time of year (and will increase until just before Christmas). A handful of the graphic artists ended up pulling a Saturday shift last weekend (myself included) just trying to catch up on some of the backlog. The extra shifts and OT seemed to help, until Friday.

[talking on the phone] And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Dom too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire…

The aforementioned suckage on Friday was a result of (what I believe to be) some sort of scheduling brain-fart. We had seven artist out, which boils down to roughly one-third of the production staff. Most (if not all) of the absences were pre-approved vacations (two artists are on long-planned trips to Europe, one is getting married this weekend and another recently had a death in the family), but I'm not entirely certain what's up with the rest. Now, I'm not privy to anything personnel related, so take into account that I'm mainly just talking out of my ass at the moment. For the life of me I cannot fathom how we ended up so short staffed, especially given the workload. Didn't someone look at a calendar and go "umm...guys, we've got a staffing issue here?"

This led to eight hours of chaos. You've got a group full of artists hunkered down, just trying to keep the engines running. I got myself into a bad mood pretty early, and nothing seemed to go right the entire day. Several orders appear "cursed," and nothing flows smoothly. I was frustrated, and if it wasn't for the light-hearted WTF jokes being tossed around amongst the artists I think I just would have…snapped.

The stress was self-inflicted, I can see in retrospect. Things that shouldn't have been big deals turned into them. At several points throughout the day my entire workload got shifted around on me. I was told that "A" was my "top priority," only to be told an hour later that "A" and "B" were both "top priorities," and why wasn't I working on "B?" I think I just blew everything out of proportion, and amplified my frustrations, as the day wore on.

I love my job, but these past couple of weeks have just been hell.