Tales from the Grind #4

“I was ushered silently towards one of our larger conference rooms where a file was placed on the desk”

The media production industry is not glamourous. It is the sound of air conditioning. The smell of organic herbal teas. Rows of silent men sitting in darkened rooms hunched over graphics tablets. The lowest level employees, runners, skulk in the kitchen picking through leftovers from clients’ meals. But most of all, it’s watching loading bars tick by on computer screens. Hundreds of different types of loading bars.

As my company grappled with a collapsing advertising market, attempting to regain its balance on the rapidly shifting terrain, a quarter of the team I was a member of were being spun through the redundancy cycle. It was against this backdrop of job insecurity that my rather impulsive temperament got the better of me. Perhaps it was bitterness that led my hand to its crime. I was in the client area of our company, a room composed of steel surfaces, iPads stuck to tables and “wacky” wall coverings. It was, rather sadly, probably the first act of not-for-profit creativity that had been seen on the premises for some time. Perhaps if I’d realised this at the time, I would have put more effort into it. I found myself, almost automatically, and certainly without any real conscious thought, beginning to draw on the base of the coffee mugs with a permanent marker. I attempted a few small designs: an “up yours” hand signal, a rendition of genitalia and other such doodles. I then made a cup of coffee and wandered back to my machine room to check on the loading bars.

A few days passed, entirely without memory, until one morning I was interrupted by my Head of Department. I was ushered silently towards one of our larger conference rooms where a file was placed on the desk. Inside was a blurry but unmistakable photograph of my hastily scribbled phallus. There was no disputing it. Having been caught, I thought the honourable action was to admit to the artwork. I could not have disputed the witness statement even had I denied the act in the first place. In any case, I was obviously fired.

If there is one lesson to be taken from this episode it is as follows: if you absolutely must draw human sex organs on company property using company property, take every precaution not to do it in front of the Head of Human Resources. It seems odd, in a company where clients and staff took class A drugs and had sex in their hired suites, that my lesser deed was worthy of instant dismissal. But then, I suppose they didn’t do that in front of the Head of HR.

By James Donaldson