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Really weird work situation
Etelmik
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My job is kind of awesome. Most jobs are sucky, normal, or awesomer than awesome, but no, mine is super awesome and not-so-awesome with one full swipe.
My company is recession-proof (just take my word for it) and my job is secure. There are 10 people, only 4-5 of which are in personal range. There are two main people which for convenience I will call my boss and my miniboss.
I'm a copywriter; I had a couple huge-ass projects they wanted me to do when I got hired back in August. Those are done and my miniboss, the creative director who is my immediate supervisor, sometimes does not give me work. He is a great guy, and does a lot of work himself. He does not give me work.
I repeat: he does not give me any work.
I need to emphasize the details here to explain how extreme this is, and why it is I'm seeking advice. I ask him for stuff to do and he often doesn't give it; when he does, it's usually something small. I actually tell him I have nothing to do and sometimes he ignores the question or comment. Other times, he says there will be but it's not until his current project is done, which is hours later. I ask him at, say, 10, and he gets back to me at 3 or 4.
He knows I freelance and I have told him in discretion that sometimes I do freelance stuff at work (this was on a day when he was pissy and told me he wouldn't do any work himself). We have a good understanding of each other. Everything's pretty open. I like him a lot. He likes me a lot. Other people, including the people who sit close to me and the third and only other guy in creative have very little or no idea how much work I do, because I pretend to work; I pretend to work because my miniboss is great, I just got a raise, and the economy is shitty, especially in Salt Lake City. One time when I worked there early on I remember that he and his buddy, the third creative guy, would have had to do my assignment but they a. didn't want to (it was a massive SEO project) and b. couldn't have done it on time anyway. My miniboss is the reason my job was even posted. I think he knew I'd end up in this position, and he just figured that mess would sort itself out. Well, it's my mess now.
I found out 1 in 4 people in Salt Lake are between the age of 20-29 (my range); by comparison, for Denver it's 1 in 10. At any rate, this job is a gold mine and I'm married with two sets of student loans and I literally cannot just quit. I'm a college grad with a lib arts degree. There are very few jobs of this equivalent in this area, even fewer than there were before "shit-where'd-the-jobs-go" 2008 came around. Plus, see the list of pros below.
I will outline the situation with the boss (his boss and my boss) in a second, but here is my current list of pros and cons to explain why I have mixed feelings. Please feel free to tell me if I missed anything:
Pros:
--Good work environment
--I really like the people and culture that work there
--I have a lot of free time to get errands and freelance side projects done
--Miscellaneous job perks
--Decent pay (for the market/location and my degree) + got a raise within first six months
--The actual work, when I get it, is varied. Yeah, it's copy, but at least the products and type of copy varies
--My wife cannot drive a car, and we can only afford one anyway. I am able to drive her to work and then pick her up with no conflicts between either of our jobs.
Cons:
--I am the best writer there and I'm mediocre/average/regular good as a writer, but not stellar. No one here can edit or write for shit, everyone else either programs, codes, designs, sells, or markets. They are capable of writing emails in a casual business sense but often have spelling/capitalization/punctuation mistakes. This is a con because I'd like to get better and I would like an editor/mentor of some sort and there isn't going to be one here. When it comes to copy, I am the expert.
--I don't actually get that much work. I feel like I'm not developing my writing abilities here. Or if I am, it's not at the rate I'd like it to be. Freelance doesn't give you much opportunity for development either; you either have it or you don't.
--Regular boss doesn't know. Other people don't know.
--Regular boss is clueless, typical Michael Scott/Dilbertian prototype office boss. He doesn't even know what HTML is. The miniboss hates the regular boss; the boss doesn't know this. I don't mind the boss so much but that's because he's much more laissez-faire with me (he seems to hate the details of my work, which is bizarre). Every once in a while he comes in with an investor or by himself. He's often not in the office at all, but either way, he will look at my screen and inveritably he will ask what I'm doing. If I'm prepared, I can bullshit him easily by keeping open extra apps with my previous projects, etc. I tell my miniboss about it and he trusts me a lot and he even tells me what to tell the boss I'm doing. I know I need to be paranoid because a long time ago he caught me chatting with my wife in Gmail once and he got upset and told me to close it. Even though everyone in the office chats with his or her spouse. And even though talking on your cell out of the office is fully allowed. This happens less than once a week, but I need to be prepared every single time.
--So, I am somewhat anxious every day. It's pretty easy to pretend, but if I screw it up just one time, I could possibly get fired (and maybe even my miniboss if I screw up the speech tree) and my family and financial life would go to shit. My wife would be very, very pissed and stressed (understandably so) and I would be devastated. I deal with this every day; the stress increases the harder I work on side projects since I get absorbed, and it decreases the more I do nothing or just chat and read emails. This messes with my freelance/creative/writing mojo.
What I'm asking:
--Did I miss any pros or cons?
--What the hell do I do? Am I right to feel like I'm trapped?
--Any ideas of how to do real writing on the side? Right now, I use Google docs to write stuff (even this post, since it's long) and organize stuff, but it's difficult to use just that. I want to just write in OpenOffice but I'm paranoid his seeing the text and the name of the file when I alt+tab. Basically I feel like these points are what writers should do, but...gah.
Any general points of insight or advice are welcome as well. Insult me or whatever, I just have to get this off my chest because I've no one to talk about it with and my wife doesn't like hearing about it as her job is not as laidback and she has rational and irrational fears about my getting fired.
My company is recession-proof (just take my word for it) and my job is secure. There are 10 people, only 4-5 of which are in personal range. There are two main people which for convenience I will call my boss and my miniboss.
I'm a copywriter; I had a couple huge-ass projects they wanted me to do when I got hired back in August. Those are done and my miniboss, the creative director who is my immediate supervisor, sometimes does not give me work. He is a great guy, and does a lot of work himself. He does not give me work.
I repeat: he does not give me any work.
I need to emphasize the details here to explain how extreme this is, and why it is I'm seeking advice. I ask him for stuff to do and he often doesn't give it; when he does, it's usually something small. I actually tell him I have nothing to do and sometimes he ignores the question or comment. Other times, he says there will be but it's not until his current project is done, which is hours later. I ask him at, say, 10, and he gets back to me at 3 or 4.
He knows I freelance and I have told him in discretion that sometimes I do freelance stuff at work (this was on a day when he was pissy and told me he wouldn't do any work himself). We have a good understanding of each other. Everything's pretty open. I like him a lot. He likes me a lot. Other people, including the people who sit close to me and the third and only other guy in creative have very little or no idea how much work I do, because I pretend to work; I pretend to work because my miniboss is great, I just got a raise, and the economy is shitty, especially in Salt Lake City. One time when I worked there early on I remember that he and his buddy, the third creative guy, would have had to do my assignment but they a. didn't want to (it was a massive SEO project) and b. couldn't have done it on time anyway. My miniboss is the reason my job was even posted. I think he knew I'd end up in this position, and he just figured that mess would sort itself out. Well, it's my mess now.
I found out 1 in 4 people in Salt Lake are between the age of 20-29 (my range); by comparison, for Denver it's 1 in 10. At any rate, this job is a gold mine and I'm married with two sets of student loans and I literally cannot just quit. I'm a college grad with a lib arts degree. There are very few jobs of this equivalent in this area, even fewer than there were before "shit-where'd-the-jobs-go" 2008 came around. Plus, see the list of pros below.
I will outline the situation with the boss (his boss and my boss) in a second, but here is my current list of pros and cons to explain why I have mixed feelings. Please feel free to tell me if I missed anything:
Pros:
--Good work environment
--I really like the people and culture that work there
--I have a lot of free time to get errands and freelance side projects done
--Miscellaneous job perks
--Decent pay (for the market/location and my degree) + got a raise within first six months
--The actual work, when I get it, is varied. Yeah, it's copy, but at least the products and type of copy varies
--My wife cannot drive a car, and we can only afford one anyway. I am able to drive her to work and then pick her up with no conflicts between either of our jobs.
Cons:
--I am the best writer there and I'm mediocre/average/regular good as a writer, but not stellar. No one here can edit or write for shit, everyone else either programs, codes, designs, sells, or markets. They are capable of writing emails in a casual business sense but often have spelling/capitalization/punctuation mistakes. This is a con because I'd like to get better and I would like an editor/mentor of some sort and there isn't going to be one here. When it comes to copy, I am the expert.
--I don't actually get that much work. I feel like I'm not developing my writing abilities here. Or if I am, it's not at the rate I'd like it to be. Freelance doesn't give you much opportunity for development either; you either have it or you don't.
--Regular boss doesn't know. Other people don't know.
--Regular boss is clueless, typical Michael Scott/Dilbertian prototype office boss. He doesn't even know what HTML is. The miniboss hates the regular boss; the boss doesn't know this. I don't mind the boss so much but that's because he's much more laissez-faire with me (he seems to hate the details of my work, which is bizarre). Every once in a while he comes in with an investor or by himself. He's often not in the office at all, but either way, he will look at my screen and inveritably he will ask what I'm doing. If I'm prepared, I can bullshit him easily by keeping open extra apps with my previous projects, etc. I tell my miniboss about it and he trusts me a lot and he even tells me what to tell the boss I'm doing. I know I need to be paranoid because a long time ago he caught me chatting with my wife in Gmail once and he got upset and told me to close it. Even though everyone in the office chats with his or her spouse. And even though talking on your cell out of the office is fully allowed. This happens less than once a week, but I need to be prepared every single time.
--So, I am somewhat anxious every day. It's pretty easy to pretend, but if I screw it up just one time, I could possibly get fired (and maybe even my miniboss if I screw up the speech tree) and my family and financial life would go to shit. My wife would be very, very pissed and stressed (understandably so) and I would be devastated. I deal with this every day; the stress increases the harder I work on side projects since I get absorbed, and it decreases the more I do nothing or just chat and read emails. This messes with my freelance/creative/writing mojo.
What I'm asking:
--Did I miss any pros or cons?
--What the hell do I do? Am I right to feel like I'm trapped?
--Any ideas of how to do real writing on the side? Right now, I use Google docs to write stuff (even this post, since it's long) and organize stuff, but it's difficult to use just that. I want to just write in OpenOffice but I'm paranoid his seeing the text and the name of the file when I alt+tab. Basically I feel like these points are what writers should do, but...gah.
Any general points of insight or advice are welcome as well. Insult me or whatever, I just have to get this off my chest because I've no one to talk about it with and my wife doesn't like hearing about it as her job is not as laidback and she has rational and irrational fears about my getting fired.
Etelmik on
0
Posts
Sure it sucks, but with the economy / wife / loans .. its not a terrible place to be in the short term.
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.
RoundBoy: yes, hence the qualification at the beginning.
I guess I just needed someone to speak about it with and also some advice on the future, how to do side projects without being found out, etc.
If yes, you could talk to your miniboss in private (REAL private, like somewhere that your real boss can't overhear... take him out to lunch or something) and basically tell him everything you told us, and that you don't want to feel guilty about being at work. Basically convince him to give you work to do.
If that's not the problem... then you don't really have a problem as far as I can tell. So I get the feeling that is the real underlying problem.
I could be more persistent with the miniboss, but he's always shown understanding of what I've said, and I've brought it up numerous times; I think it's work for him to come up with my assignments and those are lower priority than his own work, which is abundant, I guess. It's ironic: he has a lot of work, so he makes it so I don't have so much. And he doesn't mind!
As for side stuff, that isn't what makes me feel guilty so much as the fact I do very little. But I also wonder how to be productive at work...doing work for another company/publication/myself etc. Maybe it's not possible and I should just only quietly amuse myself and fight off boredom? I don't know.
I think either way, your job satisfaction will improve by being frank with him in a private setting.
Honestly? I would look around and hunt for another job or opportunities in the area. Don't go and quit or do anything drastic, but gauge the prospects, because you never know when they'll wake up and go "hmm, what exactly am I paying this guy for?"
But that threat could all potentially go away if you can convince your miniboss of your need to have more to do. Try that "take him out to lunch and talk with him" approach like I was saying.
Anyways, that way if the boss asks you, you are doing something relevant and productive that'll help in the future and you don't have to feel guilty because you aren't working.
I think the "lack of work" is the bigger problem, as that will simply make you bored despite the positive aspects of the job. It sounds like The Boss doesn't like handling the managing of the internal parts of jobs, in which case sticking with how you're speaking with the Miniboss for projects is probably the way to go.
However, I'd suggest you stop working on a job-to-job basis -- get things stocked up for at least a week lead-time. If you know you're going to be finishing up tomorrow, and it takes a day to get new work, ask a day early.
I work a job where if I don't plan ahead, I'm stuck with nothing to do as well. Only it's entirely my fault, because I didn't plan ahead.
You're in a really good position because you're employed with good pay and some freedom; however, you're not enjoying what you're doing and are stressing out about it. Therefore you are at the enviable point of being able to shop around to see if you can land something where you'd be happier, without it being critical -- you can wait and accept a more ideal job if one comes up and can afford to wait until if/when it happens.
Putting yourself out there and looking for a new job will make you feel a lot less trapped in your situation.
In your job search you will probably need to create some writing samples or at least work on writing cover letters. You'll get to see what works and what doesn't, improve, etc, all while not sweating your next paycheck.