One of the last items I worked on during the final days of being officially employed was some mindless bullshit for the Creative Department. Some of you may remember me blogging about these folks in the past. If not than phrases such as 'buggering bastards', 'you and your lunch can fuck right off' and 'yes! the fucking font is fucking Verdana' should serve as an abridged version of that post. Anyway, one of these important tasks was an issue with an animated beachball. For a special Spring Break Travel page I was given an animated gif to replace the animated falling snow on said Travel page. Now, I did not create this animation. It was provided by, you guessed it, the Creative Department. After incorporating the beachball into the page along with whatever other new and timely information was required, I promptly forgot about it. I know, come on, I'm not going anywhere for Spring Break!
Cut to a week later. I am now unemployed doing contract work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One of my very first defects, bugs, issues, tasks, whatever you want to call it, is a request from my pals in the Creative Dept. (I'd been missing them something terrible) Seems there was something just not right with the animated beachball. (duh, it flowed like a bit of Mir fallen to Earth ~ not unlike a bowling ball from the sky) But hey, who was I to question Creative?? I'm in Tech! So the idea was to make it more bouncy. They left that to me. ?? Me?! Fucking fine, I'll animate your fucking beachball! And I did. I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with the stupid thing. Thought it looked pretty good too when all was said and done. Not good enough I was soon to discover.
One of today's items was to revisit the beachball. Phil, my PM and the liaison between me and the rest of the company, was almost apologetic in his email to me. "The business", he wrote, "would like three enthusiastic bounces." This sentence was followed by our friend smiley :)
which as far as I can tell is Tech for "don't ask me, they are fucking idiots ~ just do it ~ smile and nod, yo" I'm sure in other departments and to other people it means stuff like "hey, look! I'm happy and smiling". Fools.
Anyway, I won't tell you what Jeff had to say about three enthusiastic bounces....but I will say it put a naughty smile on my face. In all seriousness, I'm contemplating giving up the contract work. Now that I've applied for unemployment bennies, it's not doing me any favors. I'm going to get a check anyway.