Bad jobs [a survey by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thewronghands]
2006-07-28 09:09![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineAny time you're pulled away from your work area and sent to the boss' expensive house to meet with him and the company lawyer and nobody else, things can't have been going well.
The actual nuts and bolts of what I did for a paycheck weren't particularly onerous (given a red pen, a clue, and a manuscript, make helpful notes on said stack of papers; it was actually satisfying work)... if you ignore the fact that the company systematically lied to clients and said that 100% of the work was done by The Boss, and, later, after pressure began to mount that all of us editorial production line folks had Master's degrees or better.
Some backstory is in order, I reckon.
Fresh out of college with a shiny degree in English (October of 1995), I scored a job at a local editing house, Edit Ink (feel free to google if you want to get the punchline ahead of time). Not needing another editor/proofreader, they did need a Gofer, so I took the job, and promptly began lying professionally for a living. I wasn't me, I was "Charles Neighbors," "Kate Berman," and "Ed Gahona," publishers or agents offering representation or publication to aspiring writers who just needed a little more polish.... at the hands of the book doctors at Edit Ink, conveniently enough.
[I've actually met Ed and Chuck; Ed ran a stationery store down the street and got a cut (as well as all our stationery business), Chuck was actually in the business back in the day, and, this questionable ethical decision notwithstanding, seemed like a pretty good guy to shoot the shit with over dinner and a cocktail.]
So these hopeful writers were shamelessly fleeced into paying upwards of five bucks per page for what they believed were the services of "industry professionals" Bill Appel and Denise Sterrs, when in fact Bill spent all day taking sales calls from prospective clients, and Denise was in charge of the editorial grind house (and would occasionally pitch in).
So, I spent my days picking up manuscripts from several false fronts (Mailboxes Etc. drop boxes), stamping or signing other people's names to correspondence, saying their work had promise, when in fact nothing but the title was ever read and put into a mail merge database, and sticking them on a shelf to cook for a week before being returned. Eventually, another unperson had to be invented, and I became "Ray Garraty" as well (a cookie to the first person who gets the reference without google ;-)).
Eventually, I actually moved into the editorial ranks, where I saw the meat and potatoes of the fraud, and, suitably incensed, began sowing the seeds of our eventual denouement. Thirty of us, twentysomethings with some skill at literacy, were in a nondescript office suite, cranking out an expected output of 100 pages per day. Even at this level, deadlines promised to clients were missed, and ever-more-elaborate lies were concocted (office fires, broken pipes, invented injuries and illnesses to a child, etc).
Remember that $5 per page? At $7.50 an hour, we each cost $60 in wages and $40 in benefits, for a nice round $100/day, and expected to crank out $500/day in productivity. That's $100,000 per person, annually, that the company netted on each of us.
A few clients finally started to catch on and word spread quietly on the net, which I contributed some of the above to (I was dumb, indignant, and not under an NDA).
So, word finally comes out around the office of the shit going down. Over beers, I lay the story out for most of the senior editors, since they hadn't been privy to the operational end of the fraud, simply leaving their names off of the summary and critique we all typed up after completing each manuscript. Suffice it to say, they weren't happy. The office bordered on mutiny for several days when I got an unfriendly tap on the shoulder and was told to go to Bill & Denise's house.
The company shark was holding printouts from some of the forums where I'd commented, and I was (obviously) fired, and threatened with libel lawsuits if I ever spoke to anyone about their business practices.
The next day, the NY State District Attorney called, and I said I would be happy to tell him all about it if he'd be kind enough to subpoena me. This was in late spring of 1997.
One subpoena and three very theraputic hours later, I walked out of the courthouse. A few weeks later, Bill & Denise had to close their doors and repay several million dollars to the clients they'd defrauded.
I love the smell of revenge in the morning. It's like napalm, served cold.
ETA: Thanks to a link sent to me bycritus, I've spent an entertaining afternoon corresponding with... the guy I was apparently hired to replace.
Holy crap.
http://www.horrorworld.org/warner306.htm
[A surprisingly current discussion of something I'd long resigned to the dung-heap of history is taking place here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28589 ]
The actual nuts and bolts of what I did for a paycheck weren't particularly onerous (given a red pen, a clue, and a manuscript, make helpful notes on said stack of papers; it was actually satisfying work)... if you ignore the fact that the company systematically lied to clients and said that 100% of the work was done by The Boss, and, later, after pressure began to mount that all of us editorial production line folks had Master's degrees or better.
Some backstory is in order, I reckon.
Fresh out of college with a shiny degree in English (October of 1995), I scored a job at a local editing house, Edit Ink (feel free to google if you want to get the punchline ahead of time). Not needing another editor/proofreader, they did need a Gofer, so I took the job, and promptly began lying professionally for a living. I wasn't me, I was "Charles Neighbors," "Kate Berman," and "Ed Gahona," publishers or agents offering representation or publication to aspiring writers who just needed a little more polish.... at the hands of the book doctors at Edit Ink, conveniently enough.
[I've actually met Ed and Chuck; Ed ran a stationery store down the street and got a cut (as well as all our stationery business), Chuck was actually in the business back in the day, and, this questionable ethical decision notwithstanding, seemed like a pretty good guy to shoot the shit with over dinner and a cocktail.]
So these hopeful writers were shamelessly fleeced into paying upwards of five bucks per page for what they believed were the services of "industry professionals" Bill Appel and Denise Sterrs, when in fact Bill spent all day taking sales calls from prospective clients, and Denise was in charge of the editorial grind house (and would occasionally pitch in).
So, I spent my days picking up manuscripts from several false fronts (Mailboxes Etc. drop boxes), stamping or signing other people's names to correspondence, saying their work had promise, when in fact nothing but the title was ever read and put into a mail merge database, and sticking them on a shelf to cook for a week before being returned. Eventually, another unperson had to be invented, and I became "Ray Garraty" as well (a cookie to the first person who gets the reference without google ;-)).
Eventually, I actually moved into the editorial ranks, where I saw the meat and potatoes of the fraud, and, suitably incensed, began sowing the seeds of our eventual denouement. Thirty of us, twentysomethings with some skill at literacy, were in a nondescript office suite, cranking out an expected output of 100 pages per day. Even at this level, deadlines promised to clients were missed, and ever-more-elaborate lies were concocted (office fires, broken pipes, invented injuries and illnesses to a child, etc).
Remember that $5 per page? At $7.50 an hour, we each cost $60 in wages and $40 in benefits, for a nice round $100/day, and expected to crank out $500/day in productivity. That's $100,000 per person, annually, that the company netted on each of us.
A few clients finally started to catch on and word spread quietly on the net, which I contributed some of the above to (I was dumb, indignant, and not under an NDA).
So, word finally comes out around the office of the shit going down. Over beers, I lay the story out for most of the senior editors, since they hadn't been privy to the operational end of the fraud, simply leaving their names off of the summary and critique we all typed up after completing each manuscript. Suffice it to say, they weren't happy. The office bordered on mutiny for several days when I got an unfriendly tap on the shoulder and was told to go to Bill & Denise's house.
The company shark was holding printouts from some of the forums where I'd commented, and I was (obviously) fired, and threatened with libel lawsuits if I ever spoke to anyone about their business practices.
The next day, the NY State District Attorney called, and I said I would be happy to tell him all about it if he'd be kind enough to subpoena me. This was in late spring of 1997.
One subpoena and three very theraputic hours later, I walked out of the courthouse. A few weeks later, Bill & Denise had to close their doors and repay several million dollars to the clients they'd defrauded.
I love the smell of revenge in the morning. It's like napalm, served cold.
ETA: Thanks to a link sent to me by
critus, I've spent an entertaining afternoon corresponding with... the guy I was apparently hired to replace.Holy crap.
http://www.horrorworld.org/warner306.htm
[A surprisingly current discussion of something I'd long resigned to the dung-heap of history is taking place here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28589 ]
