An Outlet: Part 4

18 June, 2018.

Today was such a frustrating day at office.

For the past couple of weeks, I had been hearing about this back up illustrator who was supposedly 'the best' person out of all the illustrators we have hired. Apparently he had been freelancing for the company for a very long time and needed more work cause he had recently started a new branch or something.

My bosses kept on saying that we are going to give him the best of the books to illustrate. I was neutral to all of this because I had never seen his work so there was no reason for me to believe he was that great. But since they said he was, he must be.

Anyways, we finally called him for a meeting today and goodness was it a mess.

The one big problem over here is that there is no proper pre-discussion about the deliverables needed from someone. First of all each of my bosses are handling different things and they are not completely well versed with the others' product/progress/requirements. Maybe they discuss all of that during their lunch break or at home or something but I have not seen much conversation between them regarding this. 

Since nothing is pre-decided, we end up looking so unprepared and confused in front of the other party and that is exactly what happened. The man (and his business partner?) arrived and it took them quite some time to finally start the meeting. Next, there were literally 6-7 people from our side for the discussion. Man, the illustrator probably got a heart attack seeing so many people. 

All the three bosses were plugging their own projects and the payment was one of the big issues in the meeting. At one point, the bosses had to go out and figure out an arrangement or something during the meeting. Why couldn't they do that before? Things would have gone more smoothly. At one point, everyone had come to a set price but for some reason, things were still not moving forward.  I was so frustrated by this point! Why are people so confused and dis-organised with their thoughts?! Also, why is one brother taking the calls for anothers' project when he doesn't even fully understand it? 

And that all leads up to me redoing things or adding to my already packed and stressed work load! If everything was thought about from the beginning, I wouldn't have had to waste my time doing things a certain way. Umm.. how do I explain my predicament? Let me try..

So when I started working on this project, I had been given a format for the book which was made based on the previous projects. Which is why I had a certain look of how the book should be. Not just me, but my boss(es) had that look in mind too. So when I hired all these writers and illustrators, I instructed them to do things based on those set guidelines. And throughout my time here, I have had to correct all these people so many times to do it exactly according to what is required whenever they did otherwise. More often than not, I myself had to make those changes because they wouldn't understand. And that would take A LOT of my time. Recently I sent all of them a big ass message to just get their shit together and stick to what I have asked of them. As for the guidelines, they have constantly gone under minor changes which was very painful to convey to the writers, editors and illustrators. 

And now, after this meeting, all of that is on the verge of being changed. Most of the guidelines seem to have gone for a toss. I have already gotten submissions and even one entire book ready with these guidelines and now you tell me that you want something else? And it's not even decided beforehand, it gets decided right in front of that new illustrator. What?! Do you mean to tell me that I need to change EVERYTHING that I had done before and try to convey that to all these entities who I recently told off because they weren't sticking to the guidelines? What am I supposed to tell them? "Oh hi, the guidelines have majorly changed. So please ignore all of the corrections that I have been behind your ass for and work on a completely new template than what I have been asking from all you for the past entire month."?!

And hello, these people are not stupid. They all have had a meeting in our office and have agreed to the rate and work based on what we told them earlier. What makes you think they are just going to listen to this massive change of work instantly? This adds up to their work load and they will never agree to it. You will have to increase their pay and I know for a fact that you will never do that. 

So what's the last option? I myself redo EVERYTHING and as usual you wouldn't want me to slack because hey, I'm a robot. I am free 24/7 and you just need to increase my speed button, right??

It's seriously an inconvenience when you are so dedicated to your work.

Anyways, we got the man on board (WITH DIFFERENT GUIDELINES!) and now let me just wait see how 'great' this man's skills actually are. I'm going to be so pissed if turns out to be average.