No News is Good News, Mostly

“Kind worried about things.” I say to the Passer. “What if everything changes?”

“Or.” The Passer says as she looks at the crappy sales total for the week. “What if they stay the same?”

As my one or two loyal reader know, there are just one or two things I would like to see changed about how The Old Company runs their business.  They are a clueless lot, but things started to look up once they were taken over by our arch rival, The New Company.  So right off the bat most of us in the field said to hell with a number of things that we hate.  After all, The Old Company is dead, Long Live The New Company.

Only the Old Company is not quite dead yet.  The useless morons at the Home Office are still calling the shots, for now at least, and they want us to keep pretending that we love the old bastard that sold the Old Company out from under us.  Hmm, maybe things will remain the same for a while after all.

There’s another meeting planned for the Managers and maybe we will all find out something then.  In the meantime we have to sit around and wonder-will I still have a job next month? Should I be working on other projects?  Will the commission/hours/days change?  Will we go to Shoot-N-Show?  A little uncertainty is not a bad thing, but this not know anything really sucks.

I’m reminded of Star Trek The Next Generation.  Near the start of their run they had a two parter as the season cliff hanger.  It was the one where the Borg took over Captain Picard and they were about to destroy the Earth.  It was a great episode, here was a real villain who had defeated the entire Federation and was one step away from taking over the Galaxy.  How could the good ship Enterprise possibly defeat them?  Watching it on DVD or a rerun doesn’t tell you how we true fans suffered through those months waiting for the show to come back.  The Borg were Superman without that pesky Kryptonite problem, Lord Voldemort with the Deathly Hallows in hand, the Wicked Witch of the West with a raincoat, they were the Ultimate Bad Guys.  So when the show came back and Data killed them by making them take a nap, well, it kind of sucked.

So this is what The New Company has done, they have given us at the Old Company three months to think about what might happen.  Now, no matter what they do, it will be a bit of a let down.  Of course, I can’t image that they give a damn what we think or feel about any of it.  The New Company wanted to get rid of the competition, and for the time being, they are stuck with those of us who worked for that competition.  A few of the folks from the Old Company have already jumped ship and I have to think that the rest are at least making plans for when the other shoe drops.

I’ve been working on a couple of writing projects-that whole editing thing is always more work than I think it will be.  I’ve got a couple of vampire books that seem to be moving in the right direction.  My plans for becoming a great Internet Marketer are not panning out too well, but, as always, I’m reading a new book that is sure to have me rolling in the dough in no time.  I’m having a bit of luck on eBay, but I’m having a hard time finding the good stuff to sell.  Ebay also takes a lot more time than I expect it to.

But I happen to have a bit of free time coming up.  I’ve been working, which is odd for this time of year, and I have worked a couple of good Shoots.  But the coming weeks look a little light, so I will have the time I need to work on my many random projects.  I found a cool book the other day on drawing Caricatures-hey, a portrait’s a portrait, right?

Over the past few weeks I have seen a Supervisor and a Manager, which is pretty unusual.  I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen my Manager at a Shoot.  So that makes him a near perfect Boss.  He stopped by to tell me not to leave The Shoot before the time of the last appointment, just in case someone might have booked an appointment and I didn’t know about it.  The Company likes doing adding appointments at the last minute.  One change I would like to see is that there are No Changes to a Shoot the actual day of the Shoot.  Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

There has also been a lot of talk lately about the conditions set forth in the Contract with the Clients, kind of funny, since I can’t recall anyone ever mentioning The Contract this much before.  Do they expect us to try and enforce the conditions?  Yeah, that’s gonna happen.  Once we are at a Shoot the people running it do whatever the hell they want to do.

At the worst Shoots they tell people not buy anything, to just get the Freebie.  They split families up so they can get more pages for the Book and the family can get more free pictures.  And they complain about us if we try to stop them from ripping us off and the Company is always on their side!  So, no, I don’t give a damn what The Contract says, because I am not in a position to do anything about it.

The most recent concern is about the forms we have the people fill out, I’ve never had any luck with forms, people just can’t figure them out.  So the new forms are more complicated and have more lines to be filled out, so most of the people don’t want to fill them out.  Makes no difference to me.

So, yeah, what if nothing changes?  Damn.