Daily Archives: Sunday, 080203

bizarre, chaos at work, fnord, hybrid elephant, printing stuff, rants

another victory against wage slavery!

well, i’m back from troy’s with 500 business cards for NBAC, and now i know all the juicy details about why troy quit MMP. apparently there have been substantial changes happening that i didn’t know about. bart is now “general manager”, which means that instead of being back in the press room, being useful, he’s now up front, surfing the net and goofing off. bart says that he’s going to “do something” about the fact that numerous jobs have been going on the press without being spell checked and okayed by the customer (i actually used to have a proof stamp, that had to be initialled by the customer before i would put jobs on the “to-be-printed” pile – that stamp disappeared shortly after my injury [i suspect carl was behind it], and when i got out of the hospital, nobody knew where it was). troy was tired of taking flak for it, and complained to bart, but bart was apparently too busy surfing the net and goofing off to do anything about it once he left the press room. finally, one of the new (sales)girls came back and read troy the riot act for printing a job that hadn’t been proofread, and he told her to eat shit and die. when mike told troy to apologise to her, troy told mike to eat shit and die, and walked out.

good for him. it wasn’t enough that he was working from 3:00 am because of where he lives, and it wasn’t enough that he was only making $17 an hour when the industry standard for a press operator with his experience is more like $30 an hour, he shouldn’t have to put up with taking the blame for doing stuff that wasn’t his fault to begin with. of course this means that now bart will either be forced back into the press room, or he will have to hire a new, presumably competent press operator who is willing to work for $17 an hour.

also, apparently, mike is under the impression that quark xpress has been purchased by microsoft. i don’t know where he got that idea from, but it was probably from sharon, who is doing my job now, and who hates quark, despite the fact that it is consistently more reliable than adobe.

hybrid elephant, printing stuff, rants

printing stuff

i’m going to troy’s shop in marysville today, to take him the paper and then pick up the NBAC business cards. they ordered ’em on friday, and i may just be able to deliver them on monday. troy is no longer working for MMP issaquah any more. i don’t really blame him much: mike is the guy who bought MMP from carl, right after my injury. a couple of years ago, he offered me a job (actually he offered me my old job back) which i refused because he insisted that i use inferior software for most of the jobs. i don’t understand why the people who don’t actually use or understand the software are in the position of telling the people who are, what software they are going to use. especially when the people who are going to be using, and who understand the software quite intimately (me) inform them that the software that they want to use is inferior and won’t get the work done as quickly or accurately. but that’s apparently the way it is in MMP-land. i won’t mess with his fantasy, but i’m not gonna work for someone who doesn’t want to get the job done right, and get it done right the first time. presumably he’s still got bart, as well, but with all of the work that went through MMP when i was working there, i sincerely doubt that one press operator is going to do it for him. on the other hand, troy has been doing work for me for free, and now i wonder whether or not he’s going to be able to afford to do that any longer. i’ll ask him today.