The Company -Associate Art Director
My job hunt has taking me to new places. Funny enough, none of the job leads I have found have come from applying to jobs directly, but from connections and friends.
This couple of weeks I am working as an Associate Art Director as the Company. I assigned the title myself, because they did not know what title to give me when they were entering me in the system. The company needed an in-house designer to rebrand the company, redo their packaging, redo their website and help with advertising. They are practically handing me the company’s image to do as I please.
That would be awesome to any advertising designer, but there are two major kinks that can or cannot be fixed. The first kink the location of the company.
The Company is in Long Island. It takes me about 1.5 hours to get there. I would have to take a subway, the LIRR and then a bus. The day starts at 8:30 am, so I have to leave my place at 6:30 am.
The traveling problem got fixed when one of the people who works at the Company mention that he carpools to Long Island, and that he lives really close to me. (3 blocks away!). I been getting to work using the carpooling option this week, but is not a perfect solution. My car pooling mates are Dominican. That is not bad at all; some of my best friends are Dominican. My car pool mates like music, that is not bad either, what is bad is that they like to blast their music as loud as possible. Do you know those assholes who blast music from the cars and you hear them coming from 3 blocks away while thinking “What an asshole”, well, I am that asshole twice a day. To add insult to injury, the music selections are either Bachata and/or Hip-Hop, the music genres I dislike the most.
The second kink is the pay.
When I freelance, as a professional, I usually get paid between $30 -$50 per hour or $300 to $400 the day. They are paying me $16 an hour. Their excuse is that they don’t know if I am good or not. My contact there forgot to show them my portfolio, and they were willing to hire without looking at my book hoping because my friend insisted that I am what the company needs. As a favor to my friend, I offered to take a 2 weeks trial period. After that we must meet again and discuss what’s next.
Honestly, I don’t really want to stay there, so unless the offer me a good pay, (I am willing to settle for $25 p/h) I won’t stay.
Currently I am working on a new site for the Company. I have contacted my very talented packaging designer friend for a quote, and I am churning good work. They seem very happy an excited with what they have seen, but my plan is to have everything half done when the two weeks are up. That would give me leverage to re-negotiate my terms.
There is another great job prospect coming my way. I might be working for the company I always wanted to work, but I don’t want to jinx it.
