Something and Nothing...

Here it is. Friday evening. So many thoughts and emotions are flooding to me today and much of yesterday that I find it absolutely necessary to write it out of my system again.

After my last blog post, I've received so much support and even some positive vibes that it's very heartening to me to see. The nature of the Depression Beast is that it likes to lie to me and tell me I'm all alone in this world and that no one really cares. This week is proving the Depression Beast is nothing but fake news. I'm meeting one person who used to work there many years ago for coffee on Wednesday morning, and another one messaged me on LinkedIn and gave me some very positive feedback about how much he appreciated me when he was working there, and felt out of everyone, I was the only person who was the most organized in a very disorganized place; that if he had a question he knew to ask me and I would give him an answer right away, and said he'd be so willing to be a reference, even though now he lives in Montreal.

You really have no idea how huge this conversation has been for me. I've been thinking about my last job and the problems I was going through. It's made me think about the totality of my work experience at that company and everything I tried to do to make it make sense.

When I was first hired in late July of 2010, I was initially hired just to work on the book company that the boss had just acquired from an out-of-business company in the UK, and transitioned everything from QuarkXPress to InDesign so we could use the artwork, while redesigning some covers and refreshing fonts and so forth. But that section of the company wasn't doing so well, and the boss had been asking if I was interested in working on other creative areas in the company. Of course I was! However, my then supervisor was worried that her job would be destroyed and began to make me feel like I had to stick with her instead for fear I would lose my job. She made me so afraid to talk to anyone else in the Creative Department, I didn't know we had a person there who specialized in packaging design, and was forced to figure out how to create die-lines manually, when I could have just asked him to make them up for me. She made me afraid to admit I didn't know how to do something. However, there was often not much to do, so I found myself surfing the net and playing around on social media during work hours, which the boss was always trying to crack down on. She tried to make a fuss about it, but whatever. I had nothing to do and was bored out of my mind.

After she was let go, I was shifted to working with the rest of the Creative Department, and quickly offered to take over the Print Production aspect of the company, so I could take some of the workload off of the Creative Director, who was always super busy, and so he could focus more on product development. I knew print production very well. I've worked in this industry for a long time. My first job was full-time for a daily newspaper in Calgary (back when newspapers were still important and large publications), where I learned to be fast, efficient, and accurate, and learned how important deadlines were (i.e. if you don't make deadline, you're dead!). I also worked in a print facility later on near Edmonton that printed all of the rural newspapers in Alberta and parts of the BC Interior at the time. There I learned about print production from the scheduling perspective and how long print jobs take and all the work that goes into that, and how to create the film plates required to print and so forth. The most important thing I learned there was that if one project was late, it would push everything else off schedule. I learned how important timelines were in print production. So I definitely knew what I was doing with print production.

I quickly discovered how disorganized everything was. We had 3 different servers, and all of our projects were all over the place without any rhyme or reason to it. I decided to organize the server art file system so it made sense. Our main projects were to go on Server 2's PROJECTS folder, Foreign Edition translations of our main projects (including French) and stationery on Server 1, and the Books on Server 3. I also organized all of the individual project folders to ensure all the artwork, fonts and so forth were in their folders, as yeah, everything was random. Noticing some issues, I also told everyone to change the naming conventions of images, as every title had the same names of images (i.e. Dog.jpg) and often the wrong image would get placed into the art files as it was pulling the images from the last used folder. I cleaned out images that were not used out of the projects and figured out how to pull up and prepare reprints efficiently. All of this work took quite awhile to sort out. I needed things to make sense, and it was so chaotic I had to change it. It improved significantly from then on.

I was starting to feel a little bored, though. So much menial work and nothing creative to do, well, it was making me feel not at all challenged. I wanted something more than this. For those who aren't in creative fields, it is very difficult for people who went to art and design school for a 3 year diploma to not utilize those creative skills. Work feels so mundane when all you are doing is what I would call "monkey work", as in any trained monkey could do this. I thought maybe it might be the right time to start figuring out a career change, perhaps somehow in management or project management. I started signing up for continuing education courses to learn Project Management, as I was just not feeling this job was the right fit for me. Something didn't feel right to me. I couldn't put my finger on what at the time, but I was definitely experiencing that feeling.

Well, I mentioned that to someone I worked with at the time and thought it was confidential, but she blabbed it to everyone else, and people decided that if I was going to be learning this new thing, perhaps I could become a project manager there and manage all the print productions. I gladly accepted and negotiated a bigger raise to do this. I thought I would be in charge of all the new print production jobs as that was what I was told was going to happen… That… didn't happen. Instead, my designation was "Creative Production Coordinator". It didn't really bother me at first because I just thought it was just a title and again assumed I would be the Project Manager anyway.

I began by conducting interviews with everyone at the company to ask them what their role is, what they'd like to see happen, how long it takes them to do their work on a single project, what problems they are encountering and so forth. This is how I work. In order to understand how things work, I have to gather all the information from everyone and figure out where the bottlenecks were, or how to solve the problems. Pretty much everyone said they felt they didn't know what was going on with each other's department. Basically, "No one is telling us anything! We don't know what's going on!" I quickly realized there was a massive communication issue and decided to do my best to fix that problem.

The company was so divided at the time. Each department was a separate entity and weren't working well together as a team. In fact, in the early days there was so much infighting going on that part of my job also entailed some conflict resolution. To solve this communication problem, I decided that all communications about print projects must be on what was then the new Basecamp site (our very under-utilized project management software) so everyone could be aware of what was going on, as emails could get lost, but messages on Basecamp would be there unless someone actually deleted them. Then, I started getting complaints from people (mostly in sales) that they were getting bombarded by messages they didn't need to see. Well, that's weird... Didn't you say you never knew what was going on and no one was telling you anything before? Now, you don't want to know? So then things had to change to "only select those who need to know about this topic" on your messages.

I say that Basecamp was so under-utilized because it was. It's a simple program. Just check off to-dos and milestones when they are done so we know when they are done. Yet no one did it. Many times I attempted to tell people to do this, but it was ignored. Apparently it took too much time to click on a checkbox and they were too busy with other things to worry about it. I made so many attempts to teach people how to use it, yet no one wanted to use it. It was new. They were set in their ways and didn't want to do anything new. Basecamp would have solved the "we don't know what's going on" problem completely if it was used properly. After so many attempts to get people onboard, I honestly gave up on that idea. In fact, it seemed like there was a general attitude of "just ignore her" whenever I would ask people to do it. At this point, I was starting to feel almost insulted and like they didn't care.

Scratching my head with what to do next, I decided to hold weekly production meetings. This would have to be how we can keep everything on track and I would just check off the to-dos and milestones myself after the meetings. We also had a Google Sheet showing the Production Schedule in an Excel-style sheet, which I was also running and developed templates to use for setting up new print runs. The Production Schedule and Basecamp would be 2 ways people could see what was going on, and so would the weekly production meetings, which was designed to keep all information updated about issues and timelines. The boss started to get upset that the entire sales department would attend these meetings and thought they should be on their phones making sales instead, and that this meeting should only be about production people, like myself, the buyers, shipping, etc. Um, what?!! This meeting was designed so sales could be aware of what was going on with print productions, the number one problem literally everyone complained about. The boss wasn't a fan of meetings, apparently.

So then things had to change once again. I was to make notes about the meetings and send out an email to everyone, including sales, about what happened in the Production Meeting. Again, more work for me, but what else was I supposed to do?

Meanwhile, there was another issue that was a huge problem for the company. They really didn't understand how long a print production would take. We would have sales with end deliveries set in 2 months (or less), when normal reprints take 3 months to produce, and at least a month to ship. Learning everything about how the production timelines worked realistically from those initial interviews as well as with help from a Procurement Manager at the time, and how we set up the template to start projects, I gave the timeline formulas to sales. This was ignored for a long time, as it took so long to convince everyone about reasonable timelines. "We've managed to do it with that amount of time before?" Yeah, but wasn't it late and didn't we get charged a penalty for that lateness? Again, this was ignored or dismissed.

Frustration started to build. I must be the only project manager in the history of project management that isn't allowed to manage the projects! (I've seriously had this thought for so many years, you have no idea…) Anytime a new print run would be announced with a desired delivery date that I knew would be unachievable, I would raise the red flag, wave my arms, DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! I would state the foreseeable problems with the timeline and propose a different timeline instead that I thought was more based in reality. Every single time I would raise that red flag, I would be overruled. We can make it happen! Of course, in the end, my original timeline suggestion was usually bang on. Why didn't they listen to me?

I felt so disrespected; like my opinion meant nothing. Like they thought I was talking out of my ass or something and I was just dismissed. It's not that I'm a pessimist… I consider myself a realist. Having worked in a print production facility and understanding timelines made me somewhat of an expert, but no one thought I was. It was always about meeting their quarterly sales targets so they could get the big commissions. In fact, sales was the only team there that was emphasized as the most important team and everyone else wasn't. Sure, you can make a sale and say whatever you want to to the customer, but us underlings had to somehow magically make it all work. And so much pushing! OMG... You have no idea how much they would push their sales as if it was more important than any of the other printing projects going on. Like they were competing with each other and pushed us to push ourselves, the printers, creative, etc to work faster. Sales would in fact often be made when things were still in the concept phase and nothing was actually ready to print, but suddenly a new sale with the minimum timeline assigned (as they had finally accepted the 3 month for production, plus 1+ month for shipping), but absolutely no window for completing the artwork designs, finalizing components for the kits, costing for the buyers, and certainly nothing for pre-press preparation.

It is a really hard thing to admit, but honestly, I'm starting to understand why I suddenly started having issues with attendance and lateness at this company. I'd always blame it on something physical, whether it was the many migraines from the terrible lighting in the office, or mental health issues like a deep depression, but really it was more about motivation. It's so hard to sleep when things are going so wrong and you have conflicts in the office with co-workers where you try to explain things but are constantly overruled or ignored, and it certainly doesn't make you want to get up in the mornings, either. I'd often wake up with the thought, "Oh, what fresh Hell am I in for today?" Or would be so upset about the things that happened the day before that I would just decide to stay home and take a mental health day.

That is not a fun feeling to have. To feel like you don't matter. To feel ignored and pressured at the same time. I mean, it's not like I don't want the customer to be happy. I do. I really do. Making customers happy ensures more orders, which ensures more job security. But I often felt if we just told them the truth at the beginning and asked for a later time, most companies would be understanding about it and everything would be fine. I thought honesty earlier on was better than telling them at the last minute things would be delayed. There was always this fear being pushed that "if we don't make their delivery date, they're going to cancel the order!", however more often than not, that was never the case. I was quickly feeling so unappreciated and even disrespected that it was making me not care about the job anymore.

So yeah, there were many problems under normal circumstances in the company. They'd constantly hire people to come in and fix the problems in the place, then those people would offer simple solutions to fix the problems, but nothing would change because "we always did it that way before and it's always worked." It isn't working! That's the point! Add in the pandemic and subsequent shipping issues with China in the past 2+ years, and things are so bad, it's scary. We had recently moved a major and complicated project from one printer who did it masterfully, to a different one for cost reasons. That other printer normally only ever printed simple puzzles and boxes for us before. I thought it was a dumb idea and certainly raised another red flag about it, but the other printer wanted so much more for it. And, guess what happened? The first order was shipped to us and is basically unsellable. Everything is destroyed or in terrible condition. I was right once again! And we still had so many productions with this line with this printer still to come… Yeah, I predict a lot of returns and penalties. It's not going to be pretty.

The good news is it's no longer my problem anymore. Having a network in my life now, with people offering support, advice, even some leads on jobs, is also so huge for me. I feel like this happened at this moment for me for a reason. It's time I find out what I really want to do with my life and pursue my dreams. It's been awhile since I've listened to myself enough to know what those dreams are, but I'm starting to figure it out now. At least this week has finally made me aware of how truly unhappy I was working there. Of how unappreciated and disrespected I felt on a daily basis.

I think I have finally reached the Acceptance stage of grief. My next focus is on cleaning and organizing my place so I can have a fresh start and clear my mind to start looking for new opportunities, and the final stages in setting up our Faces of Richmond gallery for the CACR, which starts showing in the Minoru Centre for Active Living Senior's Centre on Monday. The gallery will run all week next week, so if you are in the Metro Vancouver area, please do check it out. A virtual gallery will also be available on our website on Monday in case you can't attend in person. I will share that link on Monday on my various social media platforms.

Thanks for reading, for those who do. I feel like I got a lot off of my chest and feel so much better about things now. I will tackle the CERB situation next week as I'm a lot less emotionally volatile now.

I can do this! I'll find something much better. I know I will! I'm capable and knowledgeable and can achieve anything I put my mind to.