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Work environment draining soul
Floofy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For the past year I've been working in my first job since graduation, and my first real full-time job full stop, as a graphic designer for a small labels/commercial printing company. To begin with, I was the only designer, and had to deal with unmanageable amounts of work- recently we've taken on an intern (student) who's pretty decent, and for a while things have been more manageable.
However, in the past week or so, the work environment has deteriorated to the point where I feel physically sick every morning before going in, and spend most of every evening crying or depressed at the thought of heading back in. Basically, back before the intern was taken on (about 6 months back), I made a few minor errors which due to the workload, weren't picked up on and went to print. Now the client's spotted the errors, is screaming for blood and I've basically been told I'm for the chop if they decide to stop using us for their printing.
Whilst I understand the decision, it's destroyed my confidence entirely. I've been specifically working on improving my attention to detail, and put a number of proofing systems in place that mean errors like that wouldn't happen now. I've tried arguing my case to my manager but he's dismissive and aggresive. The worst of it is that it's a mainly family business, and I feel as the outsider, the odds are stacked against me to redeem myself in any way.
I was just hoping for any advice or an outside perspective. At the one time I cannot stand this job- it's wrecking my home life, I feel constantly sick through stress, or just sit at home doing nothing because of the overwhelming feeling of futility. But at the same time, I fear that if I leave now, I'll get a horrible reference, or won't be able to find similar work at all (Graphic design being a pretty tough feild to get a steady job in), and I'm the one has to cover the rent etc. at home.
However, in the past week or so, the work environment has deteriorated to the point where I feel physically sick every morning before going in, and spend most of every evening crying or depressed at the thought of heading back in. Basically, back before the intern was taken on (about 6 months back), I made a few minor errors which due to the workload, weren't picked up on and went to print. Now the client's spotted the errors, is screaming for blood and I've basically been told I'm for the chop if they decide to stop using us for their printing.
Whilst I understand the decision, it's destroyed my confidence entirely. I've been specifically working on improving my attention to detail, and put a number of proofing systems in place that mean errors like that wouldn't happen now. I've tried arguing my case to my manager but he's dismissive and aggresive. The worst of it is that it's a mainly family business, and I feel as the outsider, the odds are stacked against me to redeem myself in any way.
I was just hoping for any advice or an outside perspective. At the one time I cannot stand this job- it's wrecking my home life, I feel constantly sick through stress, or just sit at home doing nothing because of the overwhelming feeling of futility. But at the same time, I fear that if I leave now, I'll get a horrible reference, or won't be able to find similar work at all (Graphic design being a pretty tough feild to get a steady job in), and I'm the one has to cover the rent etc. at home.
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Personally, and knowing absolutely nothing about the company, the people that work there, or other factors, I would be very surprised if this cost you your job. Both because I doubt the client will stop using your company for their printing needs (surely they have more reasons for using you guys than "they will never, ever, make mistakes"), and because I doubt the company you work for will fire a talented and trained employee on the grounds of "minor" mistakes made six months previous. The clients are trying to scare your company and your company is trying to scare you.
Excuse me for a sec:
For fuck's sake, mistakes happen! They happen all the time! Sometimes they cost millions of dollars. Sometimes they cost lives. Your boss knows this and your client knows this, and I guarantee both of them have made, and seen, enough mistakes in their own work. You're doing all the right things by improving your attention to detail and putting proofing systems into place. You're being professional and hopefully your boss can see that. If nothing else, it's further experience you can take with you when you do decide to move on. (And I'm certain the decision will ultimately be yours to make.)
Like I said, I know hardly anything about the situation. I don't know how minor the mistakes were. But I've also worked in layout, delivering pages to clients, and I have made dozens of mistakes that went into national publication, and I've had people calling my boss demanding blood, etc etc etc. My life was fucking miserable. I know exactly how you feel. But I did the same as you: I improved my workflow, I knuckled down, I put proofing processes into place, and eventually I got a promotion which put me in a much less stressful and more rewarding position.
Hopefully something in there helps. All the best.
It sounds like your overall issue is basically down to it being a family run business and poorly managed. A manager who is dismissive and agressive is a shit manager. In an ideal world, staff should feel engaged and enthused in their work environment, managers should be encouraging and working to get the best out of their staff; mistakes are something that WILL happen -- it's what you take away and learn from them that shows the strength of a company's culture.
Threatening staff is a guaranteed way to get the absolute minimum from them.
The first thing you need to deal with is the stress element -- I can really, really relate to the symptoms of stress you are describing here, as I've experienced them with previous jobs too. Get yourself to your doctor, and get signed off for stress for a week or so. Relax and restore some of your sanity & wellbeing.
When you return to work, remember one thing: at some point you will leave this job. You aren't going to stay there. Even if the working environment were better, it's just one step in your graphic design career, and you should be planning to move onto other things anyway.
You might not be able to effectively change the way things are run, but you can change what achievements you take away with you when you move onto new things. What do you want your design CV to look like? Are there things you can achieve within this company that would look great to your next employer? Find ways to do those things, and collect that experience.
Don't rely on them for a reference, you should be creating your own reference through what you choose to achieve in your current role.
Start to plan ahead and look for other work. I don't know where you are in the country, but I'm seeing plenty of junior level design positions around. Be positive and pro-active about moving your career forward, don't rely on others to hand it to you.
Incidentally, I was in a similar situation a few years back - working as a full time designer, I loved the work I was doing and the guys I worked with, but the company itself was a little shady and terribly managed. I was made redundant and was initally absolutely gutted, but in reality moving on from that place was one of the best things that ever happened for my career.
In summary: you need some time off to cope with the stress; you need to change your perspective of why you are at your current job, and start planning ahead.
Good luck mate!
I love my job, but there are periods in which i really detest comming in to work. It's part of what it means to have this kind of job. However, attitude is the single most important resource you have at your disposal.
For me, when I'm feeling like I'm going crazy with the amount of work I get and the unreasonable demands placed on me I try to find ONE thing to look forward to at work. I just keep my mind on that thing and do it to the best of my abilities and before I know it I'm back in full swing enjoying my job.
As a designer you have more power than you think. Go ahead and suggest how you believe that your job can be improved, it will show your bosses that you're taking the position seriously and will help aliviate tention.
It's easy to say, but hard to do. Still, this has been my experience as a designer. Every job gets better, it's just a matter of time.
I'm pretty sure this phrase works for most jobs.
This is a slightly different take on the subject, but just in case the people you work for are crazy and will fire talented people for making one mistake, have you started looking for other jobs? You said that it's a hard field to get started in, but perhaps there are other jobs in your area that you can start looking at if everything goes south in your current position.
I see that you need the job and that telling your current boss to shove it would not be a very smart idea, but it never hurts to have other options laid out for an emergency. Honestly, I don't think I would like working for a boss who motivates his/her employees with (what sounds like) anger and intimidation. That doesn't really make for an excellent work environment.
Hahahahaha, yes, YEEESsssssss! Of course my Lord! We'll blame the peon that made a mistake we weren't even capable of spotting, despite the fact that he's actually working for us! Brilliant ! Our asses are covered, it's going to be painful for him, AND we have a scapegoat. everything is going according to plan
More seriously, do NOT let your confidence be crushed by some mistakes you made. Blaming the employee is the age-old tactic because it's just much easier than to carefully examine what actually went wrong. Making a mistake is not doing things wrong. The complete absence of a foolproofing systesm is what's wrong, and unless you're aslo a Quality Director, that's not part of your job.
Also i want to emphasize what's been said before: your boss is a moron. Threatening someone to fire him is the silliest thing to do. You don't do that. If they want to fire you they will. That's just posturing for the client. (it's so hard to find good help these day, uh? uh? )
My advice? Start hitting up job sites as soon as possible.
Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo HotJobs, Craigslist
Electronic composer for hire.
This right here.
I used to work as a programmer in the video game industry. It's an industry with long hours and a high degree of burnout, and this was taking a toll on me so that I was in similar emotional space as you seem to be. On the last game that I shipped, I made a make with some localization stuff that resulted in one splash screen (one of the publisher ones) not being included on one version of the game for one region. This would have occurred at like 3 am after months of working 80-100 hours a week to ship the game. The game went off for final QA testing, and then to first parties testing, and no one noticed the problem, so it went gold with the missing splash screen.
About a month later, when the game is actually in stores, one of the publisher execs notices the missing splash screen and calls a meeting with the game's director, the CEO of the studio where I worked, some other tangentially involved people and me. I came out of that feeling like the worst programmer of all time, and made up my mind to get out of the industry (a decision that had been building for months). I decided I better have everything ready to jump before things trickled down to HR and they fired me.
So a few weeks later I've totally uprooted my life, prepared to move across the country, and given my notice. It wound up that the studio was totally shocked that I'd want to leave, and even offered me more money to stay. I was firm on getting out of the video game industry, though (and don't regret that decision), and I left.
I mention this not to say leave the industry or even leave your job. What you do need to do is whatever it takes to get to a healthy place emotionally, which involves acknowledging that you are talented and deserve to be appreciated for it. Once you are in that head space, you will be better positioned to decide what to do.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
A question though: Why are you the only one responsible for paying rent etc.?
Limed for truth. If you work for a vendor and they're having you completely in charge of all interaction with the client, forgoing any sort of team-oriented review process, they're to blame.
Your company should be doing internal reviews, then client reviews, sign-off, and approval before going to publication.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Do not listen to this. If there is a problem with the quality of all the work, that IS your problem, but if there's a problem with work sent out, that's managements problem as they should be proofing it or putting systems in place to check if you truly were bad at your job.
It happens a lot in media.
Hell, people do it all the time, like in restaurants:
"My Steak is cooked medium when I wanted medium well! I deserve a discount."
Electronic composer for hire.
I've been considering the situation today, and your feedback's really helped me in
a) not being massively hard on myself like I was
and
b) realising, at the end of the day, job=job and shouldn't rule over my entire life. I think the trouble esp. with creative work is you tend to see work problems as a lot more personal and wounding than you would perhaps in other fields.
Essentially, I'm going to start looking for a new job, but attempt in the meantime to make sure my work is absolutely beyond reproach as far as is humanly possible. A lot of the stress of this has, I think, been because this is my first serious JOB job, and I was viewing losing it or moving on as some sort of cataclysmic, career-breaking failure on my part.
Today's been something of a turning point in attitude and this thread's really helped with that. If my life was a cheesy 80s/90s film I'd have a montage with workouts and running up steps round about now
I'll leave here so you can have a painful chuckle to yourself.
http://clientsfromhell.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY
I can vouch for the family run businesses being a hotbed of shennanigans that you usually want no part of. I worked for a family run business that repaired espresso machines. The adult son of the family was making meth, using company vans to transport underage girls places, etc etc etc and they had the audacity to fire ME under the guise performance related issues.
Glad I read this, I think I should take some of this advice myself. While I don't currently have a graphic design job, I am a graphic designer and man some of the jobs I've had...they were kinda unreasonable. Like for one, I have skills in 3DS Max, and some companies liked that enough the hired me specifically to be "the graphic design / 3d guy", and then thought I'd be able to whip up entire CG commercials on a whim. Once they understood how much work and time went into it, suddenly they had no interest and I'd be let go. I'm always -really- hard on myself about anything like this, whether it's actually my fault or not...and I shouldn't be.
Also wanted to add to the chorus about family run design businesses being abit weird at times. I've run into a few strange or unreasonable situations like that.
remember that this is just your job. If youhate it, the worst thing that can happen to you is that you get fired and are forced to get a new job and never have to think about the horrible job again.
That being said. I am currently the resident designer in a family-owned business and must agree with everything said in this thread.
That video...I would lime it so very hard if I could.
I just wanted to share a moment that sums up the things my work expects of me, mostly because it's helped me realise how little he understands about design and....yeah. To sort of laugh it off a little:
MONDAY: Boss mentions he wants me to start looking into learning web design
THURSDAY: Boss tells me e's promised a client I'll do them an entire site for Friday afternoon.
....
I've actually managed to do it, but I'm feeling like my reaction should have been more: Lol no.
Oh and start looking for a new job. Discretely.
And e-mails to the group every semester saying "As is the case with ALL labs, it is our policy for grad students to work 60 hours/week, and I expect you to be here."
And constant reminders (to everyone in the group) saying "You are falling behind and it will delay your graduation."
Funny thing, he keeps recruiting me to go to undergraduate research events to promote our lab. Maybe he doesn't realize that it's MY policy to scare people off to prevent them the same heartache.
Don't make the mistake I did. Find a new job ASAP and run from the old one.
Family run firms are just like the real corporate world, except replace 'favoritism' with 'nepotism' and 'shifting blame' with 'having a deranged meltdown at a meeting and firing four people because the company is about to tank'.
Not that this is a typical example, or anything. Good thing I was on vacation when that meeting happened, though.