I recently left a job opportunity in close proximity to me. It was one of those opportunities that sounded really promising but when it came to do the work itself, everything changed. At least that’s how I perceived it.

I interviewed for a gallery back in June and at the beginning of September the owner contacted me after some thought and said I left an impression (great!). I came in again for a second interview and things seemed to click. However, when I started to get more involved with the position and work, I felt I was treated atrociously and constantly felt being squished and stepped on.

She didn’t respect me… or appeared not to. Micro-managed and didn’t trust me and my background to leave me alone and do the work. Proceeded to push me in a direction that was counter-intuitive than what I was taught and trained to do because she compared me to “most people she had” (and I’m not). When I was working on a graphic design project that I knew very well how to do she almost forced me to do a way (a very inefficient way…) to do the brochure and had a fit whenever I tried to do it “my” way. Those who’ve hired me in the past respected me enough to leave me alone after the first couple of days to do the work alone and then came back to check-in. That wasn’t happening here.

Whenever I tried to fight back, she threw it under the rug and ignored it.

I don’t care if she’s the boss/owner of the business/operation because when you hire someone you need to have a certain level of respect for them – because in return the employee will respect you enough to do the work for you. If the owner doesn’t show respect for you, it’s very hard for the employee to justify to continue to do the work there.

I told her I had 3 pieces of artwork that were accepted into a show out in Worcester which isn’t exactly around the corner from me and the gallery there gave me two days where I happened to be working for her. We agreed that initially Saturday would have been the best day to come in late because she had something later in the afternoon. But I decided to be courteous and ask the gallery if they had an alternative day to drop off artwork and luckily they had. But because of the incident with my prints I described in my last post, “Trick or Treat, Where’s my Prints?” my initial delivery day got bumped to Wednesday fine… Tuesday night I receive an email from my ‘boss’ and she tells me that she’s found reception help for her gallery event that following Thursday and the next day when I originally was scheduled to work after telling her that things weren’t working out but wanted me to come in on Saturday to finish the brochure!! (what?)

So, the point in all of this is that I rearranged my complicated schedule and life to fit her schedule and life, but she dropped me from my scheduled work like it was nothing. Yes, I get that I am an employee — but I wouldn’t even call myself an employee — I was an assistant and she pushed me around as one.

I was also taught that you put the extensions on numbers “th”s, “st”s, etc. on a printed document. My education at Moravian and experience at the print shop taught me this. It looks so much ‘tighter’ and ‘proper’ too, to do this with your numbers in a printed document. I have a friend in my circle whose majored in scheduling and he told me that that’s the right way to do it. However my boss at this gallery told me, “NO you don’t ever put the extensions on numbers in a printed document!!!!”. I never was told this AT ALL. I also got into an argument with someone from my time at Moravian about this and she disagrees with me and that I should “follow” the boss… because she writes the check… really?! I’d be fired from the print shop (and this person I argued with continued to tell me that I wasn’t working at a print shop here… excuse me… same technical rules apply whether or not you work at a print shop when doing PRINT DESIGN) if I constantly made mistakes like that! It’s not like this is the only job I have offered to me.

There were other things there that made me really uncomfortable and that’s why I decided to leave. At this point in my career, I deserve some level of respect and trust when you hire me for the position that I have applied for. I am not looking to be pushed around and treated like crap. I’ve been through too much to put up with that anymore.