Siren Gets Fired (on her day off)

Why don't we ever listen to that big lump of "something here is fucked up"-ness we often feel in the pits of our stomachs? WHY, even though we recognize it as something we've felt before, something that ended badly, do we just ignore it?

When I interviewed for my (former) job, the warning signs were all there. I chose to ignore them. The owner, my boss and only other employee, was a small, snooty woman who made me feel like a destitute, insignificant turd. She showed me some of the work they'd just finished, all of which was mediocre at best. The worst was a horrid little cartoon reindeer dressed like an elf. It took quite a bit of examination to determine that it was a reindeer, however, as it looked like a drunkard's attempt at drawing a mouse ("Why does this mouse have antlers? OH. Reindeer! Right. Okay.")

She told me that Christmas was the busy time of year, and that it was good that I'd be starting directly after the holidays, because it was...slow. This should have tipped me off as to how this would all end.

I found that I could complete most of the jobs I was given within an hour. I devised many a scheme which I hoped would stretch out the time it took, but I was always thwarted by my damned ability to know the design programs like the back of my hand. I'd bring her a print-out of the finished product and she'd say it looked fine, then she'd go back to clumsily attempting to navigate QuarkXPress. I, then, was left with nothing to do, once again.

Eventually, I grew rather tired of coming up with ingenius ways of trying to lengthen the time it took me to do jobs. I started making Eville flyers, perusing The Sticker Guy's price list, talking to Se7ven on IM...anything to keep my brain from turning to mush while I stared at the wall, waiting to be given something to do.

Apparently, mush-brain was my boss's preference. On Friday, I had been struggling all day with a Father's Day poster (Note: This occurred in January. Father's Day is in JUNE. This is how far ahead I was.). Struggling not with the difficulty fo the job, but struggling to make the job (which had taken me less than a half hour to complete) last all day. None of our clients were available to approve it, as they were all in Dallas at some kind of Mall Marketing Directors conference. I emailed the designs out to them anyway, and sat and moved the elements around to keep myself busy until five. At around three, this became rather boring, and I discontinued all pretense that I had anything to do, whatsoever, and went to ask if there was anything else I could do. I was told to continue working on ideas for the blasted Father's Day campaign.

A little side note here: This woman owned two stock art books. Stock art is like clip art, only less cheap and cheesy. Stock art is what is used on most ad campaigns you see on billboards and magazine and newspaper ads. We had two of these books. Every time I'd find something suitable for a father's day campaign (which wasn't easy), she'd tell me that they'd used it last year for So-And-So Mall, and to find something else. I'd finally found the one piece of art in the whole book they hadn't used last year, and she tells me to just "keep finding different ideas."
I'd been doing that all goddamned day!

Being completely frustrated, I turned on my IM and started telling Se7ven about it.

At 4:56, my boss came into my office and inquired as to what I'd been doing. I told her I'd been doing nothing, as I had no work to do. "Yeah," she said, "but what were you DOing?" Again, I told her I'd been doing nothing. Again, she asked what I had been doing. I said something about how it wasn't work-related, and I'd had NO work to do."I heard you typing all day," she said, as if she'd just trapped me, "I just want to know what it was you were doing."

I thought it mighty obsessive that she'd persue this line of questioning after I'd already told her it wasn't work-related and I was doing it because I had no actual work to do. I'm sure you, the reader, understand this by now, but she apparently could not.

Once again, I should have known the shit was about to quickly become acquainted with the fan.

Saturday afternoon, after having rented six or seven 80's classics at the dollar video across the street, I received a phone call.

"This is Mlephanie Troll*. Since you have spent the majority of your time working for me working on your own personal website--" I interjected that I hadn't been working on the site (it hadn't been updated since before I was hired, nor was there any way to work on it from there), but she wasn't listening. "--I ask that you turn in a letter of resignation immediately. If I do not receive your letter by the 7th, you WILL hear from my lawyers." It became apparent that the call was being recorded, as she was speaking slowly and too clearly, and it sounded as though she were reading it.

She went on to say that if I attempted to come up to the office (why would i?), that she would have security "escort" me out of the building. Excuse me? What am I going to do, go up and riot?

This woman had gotten up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, gone up to her office, and opened all of the files on "my" computer. She'd found my "busy work" as I didn't think to hide it, being that I didn't feel I was doing anything wrong. She then wasted no time contacting her lawyer (Do most people even HAVE lawyers?). She tells this lawyer that she has an employee who has spent the duration of her employment working on her own website, on her time. Apparently she thought I'd gotten a hobo or a trained monkey to come in after hours to design all those posters and flyers and signs I'd pretended I'D done.

Bitch.