Nobody Will Hire Me If They Read This

The guy who had my position in LA, left his post. The details are light, so the method and circumstances of the departure are fuzzy. No matter, I now have his work on my plate. With the staggering amount of work that is now coming my way, I'm going to ask for a raise.

Yearly merit raises were coming up, so I figured my best bet was to strike prior to them dolling out that giggle inducing raise (you have to laugh or you'll cry.)

Of course, days before I was to present my case, I was given my merit raise. I hadn't had a chance to prepare, and I didn't feel comfortable haggling at that moment. The decision had been made, and now it would even be hard to get an increase in the form of a warm hug, from the higher ups.

"With this increase, you are now my highest paid rep."

Can I argue after that? And can you take that as the truth? Should I have asked to see everyone's pay rate as proof? My plan had been obliterated, was fading away, drifting into the fluorescent lights, and waving goodbye sadly.

I've checked around and I could pull down a few more bills, at a different job, but that would more than likely require me to be at work on time.

I was never mistaken for prompt, but this was different; A continuously growing departure from my scheduled time and actual arrival. At first it was 10 minutes but, as the years went on without the slightest objection from any of my numerous managers, it became 30, 45, and then an hour.

I always take measures to make my arrival and departure, a mystery. I enter the office through a side door, and pass as few occupied offices as possible. Never my bosses'. I cling to the walls, to stay clear of the office manager's sight line and quietly approach common areas with a cautious ear.

My boss knows I'm not timely, but I'm pretty sure my efforts mask the consistency and extent of my tardiness. So after telling me the increase, my boss took that percentage, my current salary, and figured the actual increase in dollars. At that moment, I saw a faint glimmer of regret in my bosses' eyes. No, not regret. Hesitation, maybe. No, not that either. It was as if he had just figured out for the very first time, what I brought home, and decided that I wasn't worth it.

As if to solidify that last thought in my bosses' mind, I went on with my day and made one of the biggest, poorly timed, costliest blunders I've ever made.

I am an infamously bad speller. Something I have possibly only hidden from you because of my bestest of friends: Spell check. You may have met.

When I first started this job 13 years ago, I painted all the merchandising materials. The graphics room started with me, and it started without a computer. I miss those simple days, painting for a living. Now I produce materials for half the country, including the two most demanding cities: NYC and LA. Considering how busy I have been, a misspelling was inevitable.

This misspelling was in an artist's name and rendered useless 100+ limited edition lithographs, I had designed and printed. These lithos had required 4 visits this weekend to load fresh paper rolls into the large format printer, 5 hours to cut, and approximately 1000 dollars in paper. Let it also be known that it was 4:30pm, when the error came to my attention, and the lithos needed to be in Detroit the next day.

Speechless, startled, and white knuckled, I stumbled over to the lithos and began to scratch off an area in an attempt to merge the offending "I" and it's neighbor, the good "E". No good. I considered printing patches for the lithos, but that would look horrible. Then I remembered my old paints in the cabinet.

I shoved the garbage can out of the way and opened the rarely visited cabinet. All the colors were there, but were they still good? I shake the red, still liquid, good sign, the black, same thing. This may just work. The red won't open, so I cut the top off the plastic bottle and pour the decade old acrylic into a discarded, intern germ infested cup. I quickly mix two separate colors that match the litho and go to work.

Almost two hours later, I have repaired all of the lithos, and the result (while being of a different finish) is a miraculous response to the misspelling. I so surprised myself with this fix, that I decided to share.

So my question is this: Since I McGyvered the shit out of this problem, would you hire me?