The Workplace is an Ass: Times Two!

I posted earlier about the situation at work.

Five of us were putting out written content enough for six. This week a power struggle arose between marketing and the writing department over a senior editor. The senior editor had stepped down to look after an ill relative and was working, relatively speaking, part time, although still putting in respectable hours.

So the office decided to transfer her to marketing. Marketing's writing is hopeless, and the sole employee responsible for vetting the copy excreted there is treated much like a traffic bollard is treated by cycle couriers. So I think the idea was that the editor could whip them into following the process, and free up the writer to produce more. More anything. Marketing likes more, and it's rare to see a piece of paper from that department that doesn't contain it, usually in red and in one of those starburst graphics, sometimes in captials.

Fine and dandy. But that still leaves us with four people in writing. And someone has to take over the three items that senior editor was overseeing. So my boss asked management for another bod to help out. The US office came to the meeting and hemmed and hawed while we said:

"There are five people. Together they produce as much as six people. If I take one person away, how much more will they have to produce, given that we have another issue of the magazine coming out next month, a pair of calendars following that which we've been asked to sit in on the meetings for, and at least three new long-term projects in the pipeline?"

I explained their solution in the earlier post: Break down the load into smaller units, and give everyone more units.

The head of the US writing office is a spastic, hyperactive ex-legal pro. He's been turning out phenomenal amounts of copy--at least 60 pages a month of dense legalese on complex issues, plus at least 400 additional words per day or so. Granted it's a superhuman achievment, but that's the point, really.

This week the office hired him two "sub-editors". Two.

Both ex-lawyers. They will take over the writing, between them, of a minimum of forty pages per month, edited by Twitch.

How much does one have to pay ex-lawyers to work for a twitching maniac? Given that a lazy lawyer could make $120,000 US simply by showing up for work and sharpening pencils.

And how many writers of at least my calibre could they have hired for that money?

I have yet to receive word on whether my salary demand will be approved.

Today I'm blogging at work, and (a rare event) I feel not the least bit guilty.


Speaking of asses--the law may or not be one, but the witness sure was.