Today it's president's day, and if you ask me, it's feeling like a GW Bush day in that nothing makes sense, nothing is getting done right, the clock is ticking and whoever is in charge simply smiles shrugs everything off and delegates the work to some lowlife who doesn't have the balls to pack their bags and leave, case in point, moi. Though some people are blessed with the opportunity to enjoy a long 3 day weekend, I am part of a small group that have had the pleasure of enjoying a one day weekend since I had to work Sunday from 10-7 and today is a full work day. Funny how a date that can initially look awesome in theory once you see a calendar transforms into a nightmare. That's just what advertising does though. It takes your schedule and treats it as mere collateral that can always be sacrificed for the best interests of the company.
Then again, that's actually Corporate US ideology at its best. All work, no play, screw your family, screw personal improvement, your health and self fulfillment. You should be satisfied as it is with your job and having the opportunity to sacrifice your well being and the best, worst or medium years of your life to make money for John Q. Douchebag. If you need a cinematographic example of what this will get you, feel free to watch About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. That's what it feels like I'm setting myself up for some days, especially a Sunday like yesterday or a President's day like today and I just hope this puppy can stray from this path sooner rather later.
What's sad really is that in advertising, this is actually par in many places. To give a brief sum up, this is the fifth agency I work for and with the exception of where I interned at, I haven't had the luxury of not working weekends in all of the agencies at some point or another. The bad part is that this is usually the result of poor organization by way of clients, AE's, the CEO saying everything can be done without buying time or something other. How bad can it get? Well we basically have two new business presentations, two 2008 campaign presentations plus the day to day stuff in a span of a week and a half. Time couldn't be bought and you see your co-workers wearing down. Me? I'm not feeling particularly hot at the moment especially when it was past 12 last night and I wasn't sleepy even if exhaustion was more than present (that's one of the things that happens).
But let me not digress, I'll be sure to make a pity party post to detail some of what happens to people when they overwork. The point here is to talk about the delicious reality stemming from one day weekends.
How many times have you felt as if two days really isn't enough time to do what you have to do, rest, and feel as if you're ready to go back to work? Well now multiply that shitty feeling by the square root of your ass, becase that's just what's going to get screwed. I'm going through a hell of a week, have had the delicious joy of having my stomach pretty much revolting against the choice of culinary delicatessen imposed by the company and I'm wired yet fried, go figure. Then you get to work tomorrow and guess what's coming your way, some bitch fits from some people because we didn't do things exactly as they expected.
To those paultry pissants I simply offer my shoes so we can trade for a while. I say this often because I worked as an assistant AE and though it's not the same as being an AE, I was able to see first hand and experience some of the BS they had to live through. However, how many execs do you know who can say this? I don't mean execs that have delirious fantasies about being creative execs and one person shows because they know everything, I mean an exec that really truly knows what a creative goes through. I know two and I think that's a massive number and for some reasons they changed to AE side and are probably sizing up the opportunity to get the hell out of Advertising in general.
But really, your brain is on autopilot, you mainly worry if there are any typos in your work and creative-wise you're quite past the point of giving half a fuck. So here's to one-day weekends. May I figure out a way to get out of this and enjoy life rather than work through it.
1 comments:
When I was a copywriter (wow it feels weird to say that in past tense) I can recall more than one occasion (like 10, maybe) where AEs would send down a work order and attached to it would be the job start from the client. One look at the client's document and you could clearly see that the AE received their "go" orders a week or more before they turned it around to us. Yet, for some reason, we only had a day or two to work on it. That's some shitty AE-ing.
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