I love my job... sometimes that causes misunderstandings

I love my job... Just to make that clear, because what follows might give you the impression that for years I’ve only been going to the office to check whether they’ve shut it down yet. I’m a graphic designer… I may be… or was it June… I move things around until they look as though they were always meant to be exactly there. Then the client sees them and we move them back... For money, of course. At least that’s the original idea. I like creating things. Finding a solution. There’s a particular joy in it. With bosses, the joy is a bit more complicated than prepress. One former boss cut my salary by forty per cent after our twin girls were born and I started leaving on time. Yes... on time. Not early. Not through the window with the company computer under my arm. At the end of the working day... that moment mentioned in the contract, apparently as an aspiration. Before that I’d leave at ten or eleven at night... which had gradually stopped attracting notice. I imagine that if I’d started sleeping there as well, after a few months they’d have deducted money for heating. Then the two of them were born... at the same time. We were surprised too… pleasantly… by the scale of the project, and we welcomed it with love. And I started going home on time, just like that, to lend a hand… It turned out that made me a forty per cent less valuable employee... I don’t know how the calculation was done. As someone used to managing the whole production process, I’m fairly good at maths, but somewhere here the proportions escape me. With another employer I had to take sick leave for an operation... This time the change was about thirty per cent downwards. Apparently the spine matters for work, but maintaining it counts as a personal whim. I admit... I hadn’t coordinated it properly. My body took action without an approved schedule and without checking whether the timing was convenient. In other words... never. I’m slightly amazed that both times there was a very specific number. Forty. Thirty... Someone sat down, thought about it and reached a conclusion. It wasn’t just a bad mood... there was an accounting expression of it. Over the years I’ve worked with clients, organised work, managed the entire operation of a company... and the people in it. I’ve included that last bit because it sounds good. People aren’t exactly managed... You steer them, more or less, hoping at least some will arrive approximately where they’re supposed to, without promising a client something for yesterday along the way. One hasn’t read the order. Another has read it, but understood that we’re making a six-metre flag for a two-metre pole... it’ll drag a little, but at least you’ll see it. A third has understood everything correctly, which is precisely why he’s decided to do it his own way... he has experience, we’re not going to tell him now. The fourth asks which site those poles are for... I ask where he’s taken them, to narrow down the possibilities. I stand in the middle trying to establish whether we have a process, or just several people moving anxiously around the same room. And just when everything seems organised, the phone rings... “Just one small change.” Of course... Small changes usually require the rest of the day and someone to break the news to everyone else down the line. Control is generally an illusion. In our work there’s sometimes a spreadsheet, which helps the illusion look more official. You’ve filled in the deadlines, allocated the tasks, spoken to everyone... For a brief moment you feel satisfied. Then someone opens the old file and saves it as “final_last_NEW_2”. From that point on you’re managing an archaeological dig. And despite everything... I still love my job. I like that moment when the thing finally comes together. When you see it printed, when the client is happy, when someone on the team has found a good solution and you give them a congratulatory nudge on the shoulder… “Mate, we got there...” I’ve given a lot of myself for those moments... sometimes including the hours when I should have been somewhere else. Only there are two little girls at home... and somehow it seemed right to be there… the important things… you know… And the spine... that wanted attention too. In its own slightly clumsy way. So... I can move the pictures, change the font, redo the whole project if necessary, but when all is said and done, I’d still go home to the children. If I couldn’t get up and help my dear ones, I’d still have the operation. Apparently there are things about which I am terribly resistant to revisions.