Monday, October 6, 2014

Good Bye Cris-Mont!

"Sometimes to grow further means leaving what you were accustomed to and looking for greener pasture to feed and thrive on"  -emzee

Le Giant Printer
          September 27, 2014, Today is my Birthday and also my last day in my job as a Graphic Artist in a local printing press around the area where I live. I wouldn't say I felt sad when I left, in fact I was really elated. Sure I love being a graphic artist, it is one of the things I always wanted to be, being a graphic novelist and pilot being the others, but alas the environment where I work just doesn't cut it. I wanted to be somewhere else. I learned a few things during my stay here though, especially in operating machines and doing printing jobs. On the first image presented on the side is the printer that I used to print Tarpaulins, Billboard, Canvas, Heat Press Fabrics, etc. It's really quite an exquisite machine, can't believe how much it costs though, according to my boss it costs more than a million pesos, but of course I also thought this might be an exaggeration since my boss likes bragging things a lot with me, but nonetheless I was still very wary in operating it.
Back View of Le Giant Printer ^^
Truthfully I would have stayed a little bit longer if the person I was with, my coworker and a close friend of mine, didn't decide to leave. Without her I felt I was really lost there, she was the only one I could really talk there, the rest of the workers there have no Idea what my job really is so I didn't really try to have any connections with them plus they were way older than I was, I just graduated from college while those guys have been working for years there now, their jobs were more of a manual labor sort of thing, like doing the bindings for the photo albums, wood cutting, etc. This was yet another reason why I wanted to leave, I wasn't only assigned to operate and print  a bunch of tarpaulins and billboard, placing holes in it required me to use a hammer and a tool to puncture a hole to act as the handle to hang the tarpaulin later on. They didn't even have the device to do this job, I had to actually go on my knees on the floor just to do this. I wouldn't normally complain, but there are times when we have customers and they would see me doing this, I felt like I wasn't a graphic artist at all rather I was just like those other workers doing manual labor. I didn't study for more than 4 years and took on to get a bachelors degree just to be an F#!@ing hammer man, no Sir!
Check it out, ASSome!! YO!
The Beauty and elegance is just breath-taking, noh?
My ASSOME working area!! yeah!
Well with that one aside, let us move to my other reasons why I wanted leave, check out the image on the left, that folks is where I work, isn't it great?!, I have to work with large files on a computer that runs only on 2GB of RAM, with a dual core processor than runs in no faster than 2.5 GHZ. of course with such a high end piece of equipment they expect me to create a lot of awesome art with grueling deadlines, I wasn't really sure how, but I was able to manage. It was also really hot here especially during the afternoon, it was like I was in a sauna even with the ceiling fan in full blast we were still sweating like hell. The position of the room was really awful because this is exactly where the sun falls during it's hottest times.Imagine a dog trapped inside a van that's how hot it was here. the management was only able to afford an air conditioning system for the main office, which was really unfair to be honest. Some of the people there like snooping on other peoples business as well which of course is a typical working setting anyway, I  hate it when others tries messing with my business that's why I never tried to mess around with others. I pretty much live by the motto of "what is my business is mine, what is your business is yours, so go the fuck away".  There is a lot of things that I didn't like here and just a few that I sort of appreciated. My last day prove just why I know I would never regret leaving. Weeks before me and my partner at work decided to finally leave, I was tasked to print a very expensive type of media for the machine, a Flex, it's similar to a tarpaulin but a lot tougher and way more expensive. It was my first time to print it and due to my ignorance and because I was tasked to do other things while I was printing, I forgot to roll it while printing and due to the ink still being wet on the media, when it folded on itself it got stuck and when I tried to remove it, it was already ruined. I was really shocked to know that I had to pay for it but I didn't say a word and just accepted it. So on my last day during the time I was getting my last paycheck, a whooping 2K+ was deducted from my salary giving me less than half of what I was supposed to get, I felt like it wasn't fair though, it was too big of a deduction but I decided to just leave it as it is and left swearing to loss all contacts with them and never to go back there ever again. To think it was on my birthday as well but then again they didn't know. XD
On my Last day
That place taught me how it felt to really work for the first time , I felt empowered but at the same time devastated. It made me realize that I shouldn't settle for anything less when I know I could do so much more. I might have hated it there but I am forever grateful for giving me the chance to work when I was losing hope of actually getting hired at anywhere, it has opened a new path that I could take, it isn't straight on but a path is path, on how I am going to carve it, will all just be up to me.




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