Friday, May 04, 2007

The Eyes Have It

Another relentless day. My eyes ache. For the first time ever since I’ve been working here, my employers have decided to make use of my editorial and journalistic background, and I’ve just spent the larger part of the day poring over the proofs for the company’s latest catalogue page by page. Proofing, sub-editing, re-writing. The whole thing was coated in red ink by the time I had finished with it. It looked like shit before. Now I’ve ripped it to pieces, it will look slightly less like shit. At least I’m not the one who has to spend the rest of the day twatting around in QuarkXPress to fix it.

Now, our astonishingly sub-standard Marketing Team keep asking me how I know what kerning is, and how come I spotted every single tiny error. No-one really knows anything about me outside of my role as I.T. Monkey in this place, so for them to find out that I have years and years of writing and editing experience blows their narrow little minds. Fuck ‘em. I’ve got a better eye for this shit than anyone on that Marketing Team, but I think this is the first time that they have noticed it too.

My bloody eyes are suffering for it now, though. I’ve forgotten how exhausting it can be to really look at a page in intense detail looking for every little screw-up.

And my boss has been scuttling around like a giant, bald hamster, treating our building like a massive concrete treadmill. Entering the building through the front door, doing a circuit of the office (both floors), out the balcony, down the stairs, lights a cigarette, hotboxes the fucking thing as quickly as possible, back in the front door, repeat ad nauseam. Bastard makes me feel dizzy.

Everything seems vaguely blurry now, so I’m going to wrap this up. Three-day weekend on the way, which means that I can rest my poor bruised vision for a bit, and I’ll be back here on Tuesday to continue the task of daily-blogging-for-a-month-with-weekends-off-for-bad-behaviour.

Oh! And I’ve got a job interview near Camden next Thursday too. So that’s something else to look forward to. Not a bad way to end the week. Not bad at all.

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