My poor site has been so neglected! I feel bad. I have ideas to do this and that with it and then I turn the other way for a second, and forget all about it. Sad, I know.

So for the past month and a half…a lot has happened! I lost my job, am struggling to pay my bills, signed up for college, am helping my aunt in Tallahassee with this business “project” she has, got offered a teaching position at the old tech school I went, and my sister and her family are coming down to our house for summer break! I’ll break each one of those down below:

Lost My Job: Yup, it’s true! The one thing that just needed to screw me over…my job! As some of you know, I was working as a web designer for a small Internet marketing and “web design” firm.

I was really excited when I got a call for an interview (or was it an email?). When in the interview though, one of the many questions that the boss asked me should have had me running for the hills!

“Can you design websites like this?” Basically he showed me a nice SIMPLE design created by their EX-web designer. Me being in need of a job BADLY, said yes of course! Not realizing the underlining question he was really asking, which was:

“Can you be a clone of our LAST designer?” If I had known then that was the real question, I probably would have answered with a “No sir, no designer is always the same.”

Through out my whole 4 or 5 months there, a day could not pass without them talking about the ex-designer. Of course I played it off saying it didn’t bother me, but it did. How would you feel if that happened to you on a daily basis?

Anyways, I created the layouts to how THEY wanted it. I had no creative freedom, although once or twice, the boss scolded me telling me that “he’s not the designer, that’s what I’m here for”. Then why the crap are you asking to see the design and go over it and make changes to how YOU see fit? Don’t get me wrong, I know a second opinion or eye to make sure everything fits the bill is fine, but in the end they always ended up designing it themselves and believe me, it wasn’t anything special. VERY simple…usually two colors max and usually the same “layout” as other designs they have made.

I’m not trying to complain, but it was very frustrating at times to work for them and then at the end of the December…they “laid me off”. They didn’t “fire” me (that’s what they said). They said I was doing great and fine during the beginning, but slowly was going down hill. That comment was probably because of the two or three clients who weren’t statisfied with anything, but that was all my fault! They even started to give side work to their EX-designer who they loved and worshiped. Saying “he just gets it”, gets what?!

For one thing, the guy codes in nothing but tables, his coding was horribly messy (I could never find ANYTHING and would always just re-do it from scratch, which took more time). Even his Photoshop layers were in a complete mess. I ALWAYS had to re-do the layout and copy it to the best of my ability, but did the job see that? Of course not!

I created more on spot designs then ones who needed 5 -6 samples and never chose one (even though 4 out those samples would be practically designed by the boss and team), but hey who’s counting?

As people, they’re not horrible, they gave me an extra check that I didn’t work for, because they felt bad, and were sometimes good listeners to problems I had (not that I said much), but overall as a company, I was a little disappointed.

I will talk about the other topics I mentioned above in another blog post. Gives me more to blog about!