I love my job. I need to get that out of the way before I totally hate on it (I don't think I ever really hate on my job, but just in case you think I do. I really do love it. I am a product-flow copywriter at Overstock.com. I also dabble in SEO, I suppose. It is a really repetitive, useless job only made fun by the friendships forged in the copywriting room. Basically, I write product descriptions in bullet-point form for items we sell onsite. Not too hard and usually not too tedious. My boss freaks out at the slightest "crisis" and calls for mandatory overtime if there is even one item description left over at the end of the day. But then, if we get done too fast, he makes us all go home early. He is pretty two-faced and only cares about saving his own hide and how things reflect on him. He doesn't care about quality work in the slightest--only quantity. So sucky writers who can't follow formatting guidelines or remember even basic grammar rules are rewarded while those of us who work really hard and pick up slack are punished for not being as productive. When Mark freaks out, we all freak out because it means that Mark will start "editing" our work. How it works is I write a SKU (description) and then it is approved by whoever bought the product or an assistant to whoever bought it, then it is sent back to the copywriters and someone else edits the SKU for grammar, punctuation, formatting, and html. A pretty basic process, but Mark thinks that editing doesn't really mean anything, so he just passes things without looking at them. So horrible things get onsite--misspellings and wrong html are only the tip of the iceberg. That is my grievance with Mark. He is a high school dropout who worked for years as a truck driver, an unruly drunk with several misdemeanors, and a manager of McDonalds who doesn't understand that the creative writing process is different from frying up fries. He started working at Overstock as the guy in the warehouse who decides whether the pallets can be reused or if they have outlived their usefulness. He was promoted to manager of the creative department because of his managerial experience--that's right. At McDonald's.
Sometimes I feel really bad that I just can't respect him and the more I see him function, the less I can respect him. He just doesn't understand that educated people generally have a good work ethic and care about quality.
As a person, he is a decent enough guy, but as a boss, he doesn't even understand how to do the job he is supposed to be managing. It is bad. And really frustrating. I mean, he is a nice guy and when he's talking to me, I know that he cares about us and everything. He isn't going to just fire us all or tell us where to get off because he knows that we're good kids and everything. Dealing with him in person, I guess, is much better than trying to deal with the idea of him behind his back.
So this is where I am now with my job: we just passed the busy season where we were on mandatory overtime. Then, Mark said that we wouldn't have mandatory overtime as long as we each worked at least 50 hours (10 hours of overtime)--so we can only not have mandatory overtime as long as we do it voluntarily. Then, we came to the slower season when everything was already onsite for the holidays and Mark started asking us all to go home early. I have already finished all of the work that is available for the day (until the afternoon report comes out about an hour or two before I go home), so I am writing this rant on the horrors of working for Overstock.com. A decent enough place to shop, but a horrific place to work (unless you work in the Creative department in our little copy room in the warehouse).
No comments:
Post a Comment