WORK SUCKS

=( Aren't you doing like admin stuff for your book store now? I thought you liked it, you were home early and stuff. What happened? =/

I work in the stockroom now. It's good because I mostly work days, M - F, but it sucks because the stockroom is a dirty black hole with buzzing florescent lights, and it's always cold back there. I never get to interract with customers anymore, and I feel really closed off from the rest of the staff.

I asked if I could work one or two days a week on the book floor to stay connected to everything going on in the store, but it hasn't happened. It boils down to the fact that there are only two people in the store who know EVERYTHING about shipping and receiving. I'm one of them. I'm stuck back there whether I like it or not.

Our general manager got canned about 5 months ago. Our new GM has been training at other stores since early December, but only just started working at our store. I hate him. He's a fucking accountant. By that, I mean all he cares about are numbers.

I feel like he's come into the store to clean house. Everyone is miserable. He's writing people up left and right for the dumbest shit. And if you're not a manager or a department lead, he doesn't acknowledge that you exist.

For example. Three days in a row, he came into the stock room and walked around slowly, looking up, down, left, right. Never ONCE did he look at me or greet me. Every single time I've seen him, I've had to say "hello" to get him to acknowledge me. He'll walk right past me in the store and never even look up. It's insulting.

One day last week, I came in to work an hour early because I was asked to, then I was stuck in the music department all day because someone called out. The next day, I thought I was supposed to be at work at 8 because that's what I'd written down, and that's what time I had to be at work every day for the past 3 weeks. I get a call at home a bit after 7 asking where I am. I say "I'm scheduled at 8, aren't I?" "No, you're scheduled at 7. You need to get here as soon as you can."

So what happens? I get written up for being an hour late to work. I point out that I had come in an hour early the previous day, but it doesn't matter.

We had a store meeting last week, too. When the meeting was over, everyone stood up and started talking to each other. Steve had something more to say, so he stands up and CLAPS HIS HANDS really loudly several times. Everyone stopped and just STARED at him. I could tell that some of my coworkers were insulted to be clapped at like children.

He's an asshole. As much as I love the bookstore, I can't work for this guy. I've gotta find a new job and I've gotta find one fast.

Okay, thanks for letting me vent.

Ok that's fucking ridiculous. You should complain to him then human resources when you leave and I'm definitely not suggesting you stick it out because that's bullshit. I hated working retail for those exact reasons. If you're not management, you're treated like dog shit on a warm day.

Hopefully you find something fast. Especially now that you're in graphic classes, you should start applying for that field instead of sales. I incorporated my photoshop experience into my resume and I'm looking for something graphically related, marketing maybe. /hug Good luck though and god speed getting the fuck out of that place.

Where do you work? Sounds like a place I used to work. I was one of the 2 people who knew everything about shipping and receiving there too. :) Oh yeah and Cycle Counts. :( Those were teh suck!

Barnes & Noble.

A.K.A. Money Grubbing Corporate Whores.

I remember when bookselling was a distinguished business.

My best friend was an asst manager for B&N and I heard nothing but gripes about it from him too.

I say get a job examining boobies or move by me and we can go to school together and then get some kick ass design jobs.

I chose the web design program, but you're really making me think again about graphic design instead.

:-o

I'm so confused! I don't know what I want, lol. I was searching on Monster.com and there isn't jack in my area for either field, as far as I can tell.

If I had my wish, I'd pick up my life and move to Seattle or Portland. I don't see Rob ever being keen about moving away from his family, though.

I don't mean to make you second guess yourself. :( I think Web Design and Graphic Design are similar in a lot of ways. I chose Graphic Design because I thought it would be a much more versatile degree and I can always add web skills to my resume.

Either way, sometimes you have to be willing to relocate to put your degree to good use. Real estate is cheap in TX so there are a lot of companies with corporate offices out here for me to take advantage of.

I plan on moving to Seattle in a few years, actually. It was hard moving away from my grandparents when I came out here to TX, but I felt like if I stayed tied to them and Las Vegas I was really limiting myself on where I could go with my life.

Ah, see that's the exact reason I thought to go with Web Design. I figured it would be easier to get a job with web design than with graphic design. I'm definately more drawn to the artistic aspect of the whole genre.

You're right about relocating and options. It's a talk that the Husband Unit and I will have to have down the road.

I think that the words "if I make could make more money with you ...." would probably be pretty persuasive with him, LOL.

Well, I know more money makes ME happy :P

I have been digging through all of the course outlines for both programs the past hour. I thought about what I love about designing websites, and more than anything it's about creating graphics. Look at EQS. I designed the general layout and graphics, but was more than happy to hand it off to Kat to do the coding and final design tweaks.

I haven't started classes yet, and I'm talking to the admissions rep today to wrap up my paperwork. I think that I will switch to the Digital Design. I would still like to take Web Design courses down the road, but graphics are what I'm passionate about right now.

As an artist working with coders... be prepared to compromise. :) My buddy and I have a potential side business we could do, but I wont do it because I know damn well that he has no appreciation for how difficult it can be to hand code and troubleshoot complicated code. I have nothing against graphic artists, but most of the time in a professional environment if you are working for a company that makes websites the artists do not get alot of room for creativity because the look and feel of the website is decided on and predicated by what the customer wants.

That is why being an independant web designer is alot better from an artistic standpoint. Its alot easier and more fun to be able to create something new and different that way.

One of the weirder and coolest websites I've ran into in years is www.boardsofcanada.com - they have some interesting and creative ideas here. BoC is a Scottish 2-man electronica group, and their website is interesting because they merge graphic interfaces with their own music. In some cases they use 3D environments that you can navigate through - you "fly" over sets of islands... the closer you are to land the louder the music gets, and vice versa. If you fly around and find more islands, different missing elements from the track get introduced and added to what you already heard. Also there are some interesting kalaidoscopic effects they use with images... pretty cool. :D

I heave a healthy respect for this because I have been teaching myself the basics of code for the past 3 years, and most of the sites I've created thus far have all been hand coded.

I want to be comfortable in either role, but I only have time to go to school part time, so I have to choose a course of study for school right now, so it's one or the other. If I could quit my lousy job and be in school fulltime, I would consider working on both diplomas at the same time. Art is my first love, so that's what I'm going to do to start with. Once I have that diploma on my resume, I can work on the other.

Kat needs up in here. She was telling me she got tired of waiting on someone else's scripts and decided to just use her own. She sends me this links to shortcuts she makes for herself. She's all happy and excited she just saved herself 1 hr of coding and all I can do is /hug and squeal because honestly i dont know what she's saying but she's so happy about it SO AM I! I've enjoyed going thru her code on my site and learning to update things on my own. Granted I just got done crying to her about the color of my contact reply emails and she fixed it lickety split. =D

That's so me, but I'm learning the code side too just so I can understand what's in the realm of possibility and what would be really difficult when I have an idea.

You are my kind of artist! :)

You can pick one discipline to major in, and you also can do what it sounds like you have been doing, which is learn on your own. From my own experience, college teaches you almost nothing about what you actually need to know on the job. Granted, while I was in college I worked on the School of Pharmacys web site so I didn't go into the workplace totally naked. However I can tell you that 99% of what I know about coding was learned in the so-called "real world." I learned more about programmingin the first year of my first job than I learned all 4 years at school. Baptism by fire baby!

Real Estate Cheap in Texas?? Hon I dunno what part of Texas you live in but in Houston and the surrounding area it aint cheap. Thats for dar sure

real estate in the Dallas/fortworth area where Ry is at is cheap, especially when compared with more Austin and Houston.

/nod

I also come from the West coast where a house going for $100k in the Dallas area goes for about $500k or more over back home. So to me, Texas is cheap.

i can vouch for ry when she says real estate is cheap down here. i just moved the 2nd week of january down here to DFW from maryland. the house im living in is 3400sq ft and cost a lil over $250,000 on .8 of an acre. in MD this house would have gone for at least $600,000 and youd prolly have 1/2 the land. only problem here is the retarded phone company doesnt offer dsl to my house and comcast is coming in 2006. so i get to have sucky isp service for 1 year.. woopiee! other than that i cant say much since ive been stuck at my house as contracts come thru every day for the past 3 weeks. and the best part is, my computer desk is now the kitchen table so i have to lie on my bedroom floor to do anything. hopefully my furniture arrives on tues.