Oh Google Ads, You've Done It Again!

I read this story today about layoffs at Disney Studios. Sad news indeed for employees of the House of Mouse.

Then I happened to notice this Google Ad at the bottom of the article. You know, the article about the company who's slashing jobs to appease their shareholding overlords:

Wow! Honest-To-Goodness Disney Jobs that pay $10 to $55 an hour! And there's 386 of them. In my area! Hey, that's where I live! And they're hiring Now! Woohoo! Clear my schedule, Alice! Disney, here I come!

Job Update

So far my new marketing job is going great. The work is very similar to what I've done before, my coworkers are really nice and at this point I have absolutely no complaints. In fact, things are going a little too great. Any minute now I expect the office to fade away and reveal that the past month has been nothing more than an elaborate Holodeck simulation.

As you know, right before I got my current job I was working in a frame shop. It wasn't the worst job I ever had, but I'm glad I got out of there.

For one thing it was rough on my hands. Every item and piece of equipment in the frame shop was designed to slice, sever and lacerate. And I do mean every item. My hands are just now healing up from the abuse they took there.

My first day on the job I had to cut a piece of glass on the glass cutter. There were heavy duty gloves hung next to the cutter, but of course I poo-pooed the notion of wearing them, thinking I'd be fine as long as I was careful. I gingerly handled the glass as I placed it in the cutter, sliced it and daintily laid it on the counter. A few minutes later I was walking around and wondered why my hand felt wet. I looked down and my whole right hand was covered in blood, like a bright red glove! I swear I didn't feel a thing, but somehow I sliced all five fingers open like a surgeon. Needless to say I wore the gloves after that.

Then there was the mat cutter. We had a computerized mat cutting machine that was kind of fun to operate. You placed the mat board on the table, typed in the size of the board and the opening you wanted, pressed a button and the machine would cut a perfect mat for you in seconds. I've been cutting mats by hand my whole life and I can tell you that this machine was a miracle. The problem was that it cut mats too well. The edges it cut were razor sharp. Many's the time I'd pick up a piece of mat board and slice my fingers practically to the bone. It's amazing how sharp a piece of cardboard can be. I truly believe you could decapitate someone with a freshly cut piece of mat board.

A good part of each day's shift was spent taping up my wounds and trying to keep from bleeding on customer's artwork.

The frame shop was also a nerve-wracking place to work. Quite often customers would bring in one-of-a-kind items and want them dry mounted or framed. One wrong move on my part and their irreplaceable art was gone forever.

Once a woman brought in some Phantom of the Opera memorabilia she wanted framed. Among the items were the tickets from the performance she attended. Tickets that obviously couldn't be replaced. I glued them to the board and then realized I needed to reposition them, but whatever kind of glue I used had permanently bonded them in place for all time. Ruh-roh!

Then there was the time a woman brought in her young daughter's chalk drawing to be framed. As I was working on it I used the compressed air hose to blow the dust off the art, and blew about half the colored chalk right off the paper! Whoops!

And more than once someone brought in the last known photo of their late mother for framing. How could you not be nervous handling something like that? Thank the maker I didn't screw up any of those.

So to anyone in the greater metropolitan Evansville area who had something matted and framed around Xmas time, I'd like to genuinely apologize. Any day now your artwork is going to self-destruct and come crashing to the floor.

Well, I Am Now Officially Employed!

After a long and ulcer-inducing search, I finally found a new full-time job. I'm now a graphic designer in the Marketing Department at Shoe Carnival.

If you're a regular reader of my blog (as millions are) you'll remember that the bank in which I worked closed forever last December. I then got a part-time job in a frame shop to help make ends meet until I could find a full-time job. I was beginning to wonder if that was ever going to happen, but I finally found my new job last month and started today. Best of all the work I'll be doing is very similar to what I did at the bank, so there shouldn't be too steep of a learning curve.

Hopefully this will be a more secure and stable place to work than the bank was. I hope so. I can't take many more years like 2011.

I'm trying my best not to get too excited or happy about my new job though. You see, the Universe can sense when I'm happy, and it is then compelled to destroy that happiness. I know what you're thinking; go ahead and scoff. I know the truth though. I've lived through it over and over again. Whenever my happiness rises above a certain level, the Universe must slap me down. Hard. So I'm trying to keep my feelings low-key. So, hooray.

To anyone out there who is unemployed, my advice to you is don't give up. There ARE jobs out there. It just takes a really long time and a little bit of luck to find them.

Well, I Am Now Officially Unemployed

It finally happened– as of today I have officially joined the ranks of the nation's unemployed.

The image above is a pretty good approximation of me right now as I sit wondering what in the name of Zeus' Mighty Nose Hair I'm going to do next.

Fortunately (I guess), this didn't come as a surprise. I've known it was going to happen for quite some time. I've been sending out resumes, filling out applications and trying to network with the handful of people I know around town, but there just isn't anything out there right now.

Obviously I would prefer a job in the advertising/marketing field, but I'm a realist; I may have to do something else for a while until things improve.

If anyone needs a creative graphic designer or illustrator with twenty years of experience, don't hesitate to call me!

In the meantime I will be working on my new country & western song, titled "Pink Slip for Christmas."

UPDATE: I am now officially employed again!

Rat Race

I was trying to capture the feeling of misery and the grim determination needed to drag yourself day after day into a job that you hate.

I picked the least appealing color scheme I could think of, full of desaturated urine-ish yellows, pea greens and drab beiges. The coffee rings are real and scanned in.

Drawn in Photoshop with the graphic tablet.