Daddy, make a picture

Today was my last day at the old gig. After wrapping things up around five I headed over for a chat with the new boss.

I really don’t like to write about work, cause well.. it’s work. And my life is an open book and if you Google me, this blog is the number one or two hit. So I like to keep things discreet where the professional life is concerned. One never knows who’s reading, you know.

But… I have to take a deep breath and say I’m glad to be moving on. The old company was dying and no one, not either of the partners, seemed interested in doing the hard work of building it back up to what it once was - a full service marketing agency. There were a couple of people there that I really enjoyed working with but two of them quit and the other was fired. So it was just me, the CFO and the two partners, plus a freelancer (more about her… below!).

The new company is a small but rapidly growing branch office of a larger company. The people there seem to ‘get it’ about the promise of all of this wonderful technology, blogs, RSS, the Web in general, and what it means for marketing communications and how we can use these tools for our clients.

So I’m excited for the first time in a while about work.

But it wouldn’t be the last day of a job if I didn’t let lose at least once? One rant and then I’m done. The freelancer the boss brought on board was / is supposedly some heavy hitter PR pro with years of experience but I could never tell that. She seemed completely unaware or overwhelmed by the simplest of office tasks - like learning how to use Outlook on a Windows XP machine instead of the Windows 98 machine she has at home.

And then this morning….

We had an old and tempermental coffee maker. The first one in in the morning is normally responsible for switching it on to warm it up.
Then you have to wait for a light to go on that indicates that the burner is warm enough to brew. So usually someone will pour water into
the caraf but not into the machine, put the grinds in and go tend to morning email for five or ten minutes and come back when the light is
on. That person has been me ….

So this morning I switched on the machine, poured water into the caraf, yadda yadda… and went to check my email

She just walked in my office to inform me that I had filled the pot with water, put the coffee grinds in the grind holder thingie but didn’t pour
the water into the maching, so she did.

I reminded her for the eigth or ninth time that the light has to be on for the water to be poured in.

So then she just stands in my door staring at me expecting ME to get up, dump out the lukewarm mud she just made and make a fresh pot of coffee.

So this morning, no coffee.

Nice way to leave….