Thought I’d blog for a change. I used to write blogs all the time and it was a good way for me to let some steam out. It’s therapeutic and relieves a bit of stress. It also clears my mind of things when i write things down. 

But anyway…Work has been crazy. All the designers have been doing a lot of overtime and expect to do more into our holiday.. which is upsetting because everyone else gets to take their full break while the designers have to stay behind to keep working to finish up because things can’t seem to come in on time or projects end up dragging longer than they should, putting us back. 

Our art director/manager had the opportunity to go to an expo my office holds in Long Beach, California. My bosses must have really liked her because they never invite one of the designers to go. I suppose it’s because we have to stay behind to take calls and work on magazines. Well, come the following week before the sales team and bosses had returned, our art director’s hubby came in to drop off a hard drive. I was in the kitchen at this time trying to pop popcorn with the new popcorn maker.

But my colleagues said that her hubby said she was back, but the trip did not go well and that she would be taking the rest of the week off. He never went into detail and we all just wondered what happened. 

When our boss came back, he had no idea she was even taking the week off. We were given a story of what happened, but it seemed really weird since the story that was told, didn’t seem that bad that she would need the rest of the week off. She made no contact with anyone during this time. She ignored everyone including my boss. We tried to get one of the sales girls to tell their side of the story, but she didn’t really know as she left the scene early that night. She kind of rolled her eyes which gave us the impression that my art director was overreacting over whatever happened. We never asked the other sales people about it because it was awkward and it also seemed like this strange dark secret everyone was keeping from us. 

After a week, still no word from her. We finally get a phone call from her mother-in-law on her behalf that she was still not feeling well and would not be coming in for the rest of the week. This made the situation even weirder! My whole department then started speculating and coming up with weird scenarios to what could have happened! It was pretty funny and terrible at the same time because we came up with some pretty  bad ones! 

The weeks went by and she never came back. Still no word from her after over a month. The messed up thing was, my bosses still expected her to come back! She left work with no word, left all of us in a horrible spot trying to get out too-many-to-count-publications during the busiest time of the year, and they still were hoping for her to return? At this point, all the staff was not impressed and pretty upset that she left us hanging to die during deadline. 

We did manage to bring in a really great person to help us out during our jam. Bad thing is she lives almost 2 hours away and had been staying at a friend’s or driving back and forth to come work with us. We wish she could stay full-time, but she has her own design business. Although she really hopes she can do the gig part time from home and come in once in a while. 

So, where is our former art director now?

Heard from one of the sales girls (also daughter of the one of the couple who owns the company I work at) who has still been keeping contact with her through email, that she resigned by email recently… Still no official announcement has been made of her departure. Everyone seems to be avoiding the situation. Again, very suspicious and strange. 

My editor did spot her about to go and grab a Starbucks coffee… but she thinks she saw her and decided to go through the drive through instead. She was hiding behind giant glasses and trying to hide herself. I mean, really? Come clean. It’s incredibly cowardly of her to have avoided contact with everyone, including us her team and not tell anyone anything! How messed up is that? I know she must be embarrassed or ashamed, or whatever, but it was really not cool of her to ditch us with no word. 

Needless to say, my department is still really bitter about the whole thing. Even if the situation wasn’t that bad or it was bad, if she told us, we would have respected her decision if she was traumatized by what happened and wanted to move on. But she didn’t and chose to be a coward and hide from it. And today we hear she’s moving to some city in the BC interior. Unbelievable. 

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