One of my biggest pet peeves is people who go on and on about how they are just too busy to do whatever. It makes me see red. My head spins on my neck 666 times. I vomit pea soup. I wonder why I’m losing my stomach lining.
There are some of my compatriots in Los Angeles who really do not have any more time they could make. Not too many. But some.
I just had to deal with a problem where a designer I work with claimed that he would not have time to swap one picture for another in a layout any time this week. Even though this would be potentially extremely costly for the publisher. Even though the reason that anything needed to be changed at all is because this designer pushed the line on what was acceptable when he knew what the rules were. Without him having pushed things, this swap would not have been needed. Supposedly, however, this guy’s part time job was just so time-consuming. Only this production edit was really really really important and lot of people’s future situations were on the line. So Forrest came in to save the day and said he would do this other person’s work. Suddenly the designer decided he could actually do it after all. The guy was too busy if it was just really important to other people, but he was not too busy if it looked like he could be replaced.
The real irony here is that the publisher told me point blank that he would fire this lazy designer’s ass in a heartbeat if I wanted him to. This was when the designer first caused the problem And I was all like no, no, we’ll work it out so everyone is happy. And I haven’t slept for a week while I’ve been trying to keep up with my usual schedule while interfacing with various concerned parties. And we finally hammer out a solution where everyone is a little bummed but mostly happy. And the guy who caused the problem in the first place is too busy.
–Amelia G