There’s nothing quite like starting one’s workday by going over one’s mistakes, my mistakes. Jeff explained how I dropped the ball, and it was pretty bad. In a hurry to please many masters, I made the kind of obvious error that could have been missed until the job was already at the printer, which is in Spain. That would be bad.
I could go into the details of how and why, and blah, blah, blah, but I’m mostly just grateful that it got caught when it did. I’m chalking this one up to experience, and continuing to work on really listening to instructions about jobs. (There’s a strange dynamic at work that I should probably explain, but it’ll have to wait until later.)
Anyhoo, today was the deadline for completing the work that was scheduled for Spain. The first of the day was quiet, yes, too quiet. Ellen, Kay and I were all deep in concentration, and hard at work. We didn’t turn on the radio all day, and our conversation was minimal and mostly job-related.
You know, a lot of the work I’ve been doing has been both painstaking and cerebral. For example, among the many recurring tasks I perform within the course of my day is the recurring chore of moving an artist’s signature. When original art is cropped to a new size, the artist’s signature can get clipped, and sometimes cropped off altogether. It becomes my task to copy the signature and to move it to a new location on the painting, making sure that it looks completely natural. This means inspecting and adjusting images at the pixel level.
The signature I was working on today was particularly tricky. The grainy, metallic background the signature was on was little help, and it played tricks on my eyes. It took me about an hour and a half of careful editing. I was glad to get it done, and quite pleased with the results. (I didn’t even tell anyone that I had to construct this signature from two separate samples to achieve a clean, natural result.)
By around noon it became apparent that tensions around the office were riding a bit higher. People were still polite, but working at a fever pitch. When someone from another department popped in to ask a few questions about a job that was obviously an important matter to her, no one broke stride in what they were doing to respond to her. She got what slim answers she could and quickly backpedaled, apologizing for the inconvenience.
I hope you’ll understand that the behavior and atmosphere I’m describing here is nothing personal; it’s just that the deadline is that serious. Today is the last time the production department will see these files before they are sent to Spain. It is my understanding that, for all intents and purposes, the next time these files will be reviewed the plates will be on the press. So, to say that things get costly from this point is a gross understatement.
Things started to break loose after noon as the available compliment of employees began to thin. I also recognized that a few other unknown dramas were playing out, but I had no idea about their plots or importance. (Thank God! I had enough on my plate already.)
One cool thing that happened today was that the new light booth got set up. Jeff had ordered this equipment a few weeks ago and had been anticipating it’s arrival, but everyone was too busy to even unpack it when it arrived yesterday. Obviously, you have to be taking color pretty damn seriously to have one of these suckers on the premises, and color is the name of the game. (FYI: The idea is simple enough: the light booth provides a neutral lighting environment for viewing color. Just how much it cost, however, is a question I don’t have the answer to.)
I had plenty of opportunity to use this new equipment, too. Late in the afternoon I had serious problems isolating and correcting a challenging color issue. I’d been working on it for way too long, and had failed to produce to satisfactory results. I knew was going in circles, and realized I hadn’t isolated the perceived problem enough to formulate a appropriate strategy for how to fix the piece. It was just wrong.
Feeling like I’d hit my wall, frustrated and embarrassed, I approached Jeff about it. Very politely, he listened to my issue, and then he explained that his attention was fully devoted to resolving his own “crisis,” so I’d have to “struggle (my) way through it, or just move on to another piece.” Not wanting to give up (at all), I then asked Kay for her guidance, but she also politely explained that she was too busy working on her tasks to assist me.
You know, I love swallowing my pride just as much as the next guy. And this was way worse. It’s one thing to tell someone that you’re having difficulties, and an entirely different thing to feel like you’re incapable of doing your job. Still having yesterday’s debacle fresh in my mind, I guess I even got a little pissed.
To get a fresh start, I switched to another job for about an hour, working on something a bit easier while mentally working through my real challenge. After about an hour and a half, I finished that job and returned to my adversary. I decided that I wasn’t going to stop until I’d succeeded, and that’s when I heard that still, small idea that presented my solution. I knew I had it, and the very next round of printing met instant approval!
I ended up staying over two hours later that I normally would’ve, but I did finish up all that I’d needed to do. I was the third to the last person out of the building.
