The Employer of Doom

Following my departure from the evil corporate photography company, I decided to try my hand at building my own company.

I started out with the deluded idea that I had some kind of head start because I had done my Independent Study on how to run a successful photography business. I read books, researched articles, and talked to local photographers about how to run a business. My portfolio covered everything from business plans to marketing strategies. I had even contacted different printers for samples so I could compare prices and quality for staples like business cards and letterhead. I worked for months, wanting to cover everything. I turned in my portfolio two weeks early, and was delighted when Curt told me it was the best he had ever seen.

When I went to actually start my own business, however, I discovered my error. My entire portfolio assumed that a business was started with money from a small-business loan. With over 70k in student loans, I didn’t want any more debt, and doubted it I could be approved for one anyway. I was now without a job, and scrambling to start a business with no money for investment.

I realized that we were going to have to me more resourceful and creative than most in building up a client base. In the meantime, I started searching for a new job.

I was less picky about what line of work it was in, as I had long ago decided that it would be better to be a bank teller than a photography underling who, not only didn’t earn much, didn’t learn anything either.

I had applied for a few positions, when I learned that I might be able to land a decent photography position after all.

A Des Moines businessman who had once taken a class from Curt Stahr was looking for an in-house product photographer for his company. He talked to Curt, who recommended me. After hearing that I was “the best of the best,” he decided to take a chance on me.

My future employer, Patrick, set up an interview with me via email:



Erin,

Everything sounds pretty good. I asked Curt at DMACC about you today and he had nothing but praise. I take an occasional photography class from Curt so you and I may have even had a class together at some point in the past. Just so you know, I can totally take care of the photography here myself.......but I just don’t have time. Our business is busy and growing and it is easier to hire someone to do the photography plus it gives someone like you a chance to have a job in their field.

Right now we have the equipment for our own studio but its still in boxes and has never been set up. The photography position here is very flexible. We can work around your class schedule and any other job you have. The pay is nothing phenomenal at $9/hr (to start) but hopefully will be enough. We can pretty much give you as much work as you want. Not all would be photography though. Your responsibilities would be to photograph new products, edit the photographs and upload them to our website (easy to do and I will teach you). We would also then let you start looking at photographs already on our site and see what can be improved upon and take new photos to do that. It doesn't sound exciting but it really is kind of fun. Getting the right angle and composition and getting a better shot than any of our competitors makes you really tap into your creativity. That is something I think you will enjoy.

We have another project that could keep you plenty busy as well. Its not related to our business but needs done nonetheless. I have thousands of photos my mother shot. These need to be scanned and cataloged. There are a lot of old photos that could be repaired in Photoshop if you are good at that as well. This is one of those projects I planned on doing but time just does not allow. Paying you to do it would be money well spent and you would really sharpen your Photoshop skills at the same time. I have the same scanner they have at DMACC and some great catalog software that Steve Bendy recommended.

Beyond that there is always other work to do here depending on how much you want to work and how much you want to earn. We are a small business. Besides me I have 3 full time employees and 2 part time. All of us are young and it’s a fun progressive business. If you someday want to open your own studio I think you could pick up a lot of skills here on how to run your own business. We could eventually give you responsibilities that would allow you to pick up some of these skills beyond photography.

Let me know when you would like to come over and we will show you the place and we can "interview" more.

Patrick ---------


Looking back, there are so many things that should have been red flags, but I was young and naive and I believed that all employers were nice people who would be nice to their employees.

This particular company was in the business of selling of BMX equipment. It was my job to photograph all new inventory, and update old photos already on the site.

It was immediately obvious to me that my boss was not nearly so talented as he thought. The existing photographs were poorly composed, improperly lighted, and generally overexposed. The colors were largely inaccurate and many of the photos weren’t in focus.

I launched into my work with vigor, but was quickly told to re-shoot the products. Knowing nothing about bike parts, I had been shooting several of them upside down.

It started out rather well. My coworkers, Mike Porter and Mike Hamilton, were friendly and fun to work with, always willing to carry some heavy box or take a couple of minutes to explain to me what a sprocket was for. The Mikes were fantastic, and the work was actually very interesting to me. I loved being able to figure out different ways to achieve the look I wanted.

As the days went on, however, I stayed in my studio space as much as possible, working at my desk only when I absolutely had to. It wasn’t because I was such an incredibly dedicated employee as much as it was because Patrick had a unique way of dealing with the stress of running a business.

He was in such a committed relationship with his girlfriend that they had decided to start a business together. Understandably, this created some tension. About once a week, they would spend a half hour or so analyzing their differences. Unusually, this just involved screaming and yelling, but sometimes they would throw things. Just small things, though. Pens. File folders. Telephones. Afterwards, they would storm out and we wouldn’t see them for the rest of the day. Katie usually went home, and we suspected that Pat went to the bar.

When the tension in the office became such that we expected some fireworks, the Mikes and I would congregate in a back corner of the office and take bets on what we thought would happen. It was a difficult game, as the outcome was sporadic and often unexpected.

Patrick had his faults, but, all in all, he was a friendly guy. You could hardly dislike him just because he yelled at his employees and once backed into Hamilton’s car. And, after all, he was doing us a favor by writing our paychecks, so we should be willing to adjust our behavior to suite his mood for the day.

The first outburst took place about a week after I was hired. The closet thing I’d ever seen before that was my little nephews’ temper tantrums, and I wasn’t really sure what to do. I stared at the wall until Patrick stormed out to the parking lot and then went to talk to the Mikes.

They barely glanced at me as I walked up, but I detected a hint of a smile as they observed, “So, I see you survived.”

I found the situation slightly less humorous. “What the heck was THAT?”

Eventually, my coworkers talked me out of quitting and, over time, I learned to deal with Pat and Katie fairly well. I’d retreat to my studio until it was over, or sometimes I’d be lucky enough to have clocked out for the day already. Even so, I witnessed an outburst about once a week.

While I remained very busy through the first few months of my work, I prided myself on being efficient and soon exhausted the extensive list of products I was to photograph. There were a number of older photographs that needed replacing, but many of the items we’re currently out of stock and I had to wait until they were available again.

Weekly, I asked Pat about the scanning project he had mentioned. The best I would normally receive in terms of responses was a vague answer referencing “some time soon.” I was getting increasingly annoyed as time passed and I spent more and more time at my desk looking at the help wanted ads.

Through to talking to my coworkers, I discovered that this kind of treatment wasn’t entirely unusual. Hamilton, who worked primarily in packing and shipping, had originally been hired on as the general manager. He had been promised a specific list of duties and responsibilities that, upon actually being hired, had been withdrawn.

Pat was the kind of person commonly referred to as a control freak. All of his employees were stupid and incompetent and no on could do things as well as he could.

In reality, he was a disorganized mess. Pat had long ago decided that I was unfit to actually upload images to the website, and I did it himself. Every Friday I would burn him a CD of all the images I had finished over the course of the week. Supposedly, he was to look them over, make notes of anything he wanted changed, and upload the accepted photographs. Any images he didn’t like were listed and given to me to re-shoot.

This didn’t always happen. Actually, it almost never happened. Monday morning, I would show up at my desk, clock in, and head to the studio. After the first one or two weeks, I no longer got input regarding the files, so I assumed they were fine. Only a handful of images showed up on the site, but we all knew that Pat was a very busy man. He was so busy that he didn’t manage to show up at work until about an hour before he clocked out for lunch. Such a busy person shouldn’t be troubled with small details like maintaining a website.

Three months or so after I started work, I was suddenly informed that the bike frames I had been photographing needed to be posed in a specific way, a position other than the way I had done it previously. I was very appreciative that my employer addressed this problem so promptly. If he had waited another three months it could have taken me weeks to re-shoot everything instead of a paltry nine days. I was very grateful to have a boss who looked out for my best interests.

Every few weeks, he Pat would send me an email demanding to know why I hadn’t finished the “proper seat post” shot he had asked for a month ago. I had to repeatedly explain that I had finished the shot and put it on his desk several weeks ago. Insisting he hadn’t seen it, I would burn another copy. I would have been annoyed, but things disappeared so frequently from Pat’s desk that it was obvious some mischievous employee was moving things, there was no other explanation.

Normally, Patrick tolerated zero mistakes from his employees. He would fly into a rage over a mis-shipment and scream at Katie before storming out. When one of the Mikes bravely explained that a rather large order had been shipped incorrectly, we were surprised when all he delivered was a mild reprimand and a reminder to be more careful. Such a change in attitude was so surprising and unexpected, that the Mikes became suspicious. They soon discovered that the item had been shipped out on a day that both the Mikes had been out with the flu. Pat had shipped it himself.

We began referring to our employer as “the pointy-haired boss” after the similarly incompetent character featured in the Dilbert cartoons.