FlaFiOcto?

Hello lovies, yes.  I do want to do OctoFlaFicMo. Or did we call it FlaFiOcto?  I found an old tag with that… Anyway, I do not have a wonderfully ambitious goal like Anya.  I just made a goal to finish something.  It's the shortest piece I have cooking right now, but it's done!

Work has been incredibly busy, and now increasingly stressful.  It's our busy season, and with the staffing reduction, my immediate work group has two BIG clients that are now handled by 3 people instead of 4.  Oh, and I'm still working on a really tiny client (1 very wee package a month) that requires me to be doing something for it, each week… which would be fine, except I'm also working on an old client of mine who was pretty much taken care of for the year.  Until I just learned on Thursday, they want to do extra mailings and change creative.

Have a headache yet?  I haven't even gotten to the good part.  One of the BIG clients, the one I've been working on since March, is going absolutely crazy.  The account director is on maternity leave.  Which would be fine, if she actually trained the new chick they hired a few months ago who's supposed to be driving the train.  The new one is clueless. And the client had a meeting with our CEO and some bigwig there to talk about 'pricing transparency'.  This client is the only one, I think, that has a completely fixed margin that is way less than any of the other 5 clients I've worked on.

And why is that so frustrating, you ask?  Because I've been busting my ass trying to get mail out and TV spots on air on schedule, and all they see is "how expensive" we are compared to working directly with production vendors.  Um.  Yeah, of course we're more expensive.  We're providing strategy, direction, proofing, coordination and taking care of all the other issues that come up.  And then, when they decide to change their logo (a major brand change! without giving us clear brand guidelines!) one day before art is due to go to the vendor, we're slapped on the hand for saying making the logo change could delay your mail date.

What what what?  Account team, what are you doing??  Control these crazies!

Oh, and I have to work today (Sunday) on 2 of the 7 art collects that are due next week.  For those of you who might be unfamiliar, that's 7 completely different mail packages that I create the instructions on how to set up the art for production. Thankfully, 4 are already in queue for prepress (the graphic designer) to work on.  I was going to work on the 2 art collects on Friday, but the client decided to freak out about the mail plan, have a meeting, change wording that affects 4 packages, and give me heart palpitations (ok - just a raging headache).  So yeah.  Couldn't get to that.