The Un-Sweatshop

Here's the horrible mess on my desk. Actually, I'm prone to clutter, but when coworkers are going to your boss to with prissy complaints that you're unhygienic, best not to let too many post-its accumulate, right?

With gas going past the $3 a gallon mark, and with the busiest quarter of the year coming on where I work, there's a reason why I might have over twelve gallons of Diet Dew on my desk:

The gas station I pass on the way to work has a 'Tank Bank' program, a loyalty card where buying certain items gets you a discount on gas. At 89¢ per two-liter, they are undercutting the grocery store across the way for Diet Dew two-liters anyway, so that's where I'd buy them. Short of installing a full 'fountain' system on my desk, which I don't have room for, this is the most economical way for me to remain an unrepentant caffeinist and have the delivery-method of choice at hand. Economics has forced me to drink the free coffee at tea at work in the past, and will no doubt do so in the future, but nothing beats Diet Dew.

They were going to do a big group study on the safety of aspartame, but then they found out about me. I'm the canary in the mine: if I stay cancer-free, you're in the clear.

So these 89¢ two liters, last payday, I decided to stock up. Because not only are they about as cheap as I've seen them in recent years, each bottle earns 3¢ of discount on my next 15 gallons of gas. Would I be money ahead to drink the break-room coffee? Marginally: since the gas to get to and from work is not a discretionary expenditure, when you factor the discount in (you could look at it as a discount on gas or as savings on the soda), it's less than 50¢ a day for me to have the good stuff.

One coworker asked me if I was setting up shop. I told him the skinny and he thought it made sense. But the same asshole who thinks I'm a stinky slob, he thinks this is clutter. Something he shouldn't have to 'deal with.'

I've come to realize that he's not just pathetic, he's unhappy working there. There's a couple of people in my office who seem to fit this mold. I can remember when they were happy (and when they would talk to me).

Here's the thing: I know of no other place where I can apply my skills for more money or better benefits in the KC Metro. And that's the fifth largest market for printing in the U.S., so it's not like there's no one else employing production artists. The weakest artists in my department are pretty damned good, the best are astonishing, and the pay and benefits are a big part of why. People who've maxed out the pay scale at similar art departments have failed our pre-interview tests. We've got good equipment and software, a relatively comfortable cubicle farm, flexible schedules, etc.

And even these goons can't seem to make me unhappy about working there. Since jazz musician and novelist weren't careers that offered me the chance to support a family, how busted up can I get about being paid to fiddle around with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign?

Maybe I should fake depression symptoms and get Prozac scripts from my doctor, then lace these guys' beverages with it. If you're unhappy, it's easy to blame it on your job. If there's no one offering better pay for what you do, you're stuck. So find stuff to bitch about. A coworker who's growing his hair to donate to Locks of Love, for example. Find someone who isn't miserable, and hate him for it...