Life is Cheap

What I do for a living is not easy to explain. A good start would be to tell you that everytime you see a commercial on TV or hear one on the radio for a big national company, someone had to ship that commercial (also known as a "spot" in the industry) to the stations. That's where my company comes in. I don't want to say the name of it, because while I don't love my job, I don't loathe it, either, and would like to keep it. I specifically don't deal with that end of things. My company provides an array of services, but the biggest is broadcast distribution, which I just described above. What I do is work with an extension of one of our clients. They are the second biggest client for this local office. I'm the one and only frontline contact for an account worth almost a million dollars a year for my company, but you'd never know it based on my hourly. So, basically, what I handle are all of the requests that come from this extension of the bigger client. I coordinate the duplication and distribution of compilation reels of spots for internal meetings between the client and their clients. I also deal with all of the weird shit that comes through here like trying to get a VHS tape with four spots on it to a hotel on Maui within less than 8 hours. I can do it, but it'll cost you. A lot. Anyway, my office is in the Detroit area, so of course our biggest client is a carmaker. We have four other offices around the country. Our biggest client is a big film/theme park company, but we don't deal with that here. Here in the D it's all about cars. Big, shiny chunks of gleaming plastic and steel. Our primary contacts are this one automaker's advertising agencies. They give us the spots, instructions as to where to send them, and a heaping dose of bullshit. Don't get me wrong, many of the people we deal with from the agencies are very intelligent people and very good at their jobs. On the other hand, many of them are complete idiots and I'm shocked that an accredited university would actually give them a Bachelor's degree in anything besides physical education. It's truly depressing to be complimented on a daily basis for how well you deal with pressure, deadlines, aggravating client requests, and general BS from the clients yet at the end of the day, you know that these idiots make twice the amount of money you make and all they do is go through the motions. Is it just me, or is it good to know everything you possibly can about your job and the events that affect it? Is thorough documentation of your actions at the office really a bad thing? How about accountability? Responsibility? Obviously, I shouldn't be working in an office setting, but it seems to be something I'm good at (not the office, but handling the account I work with). I actually like it. Sort of. I just hate knowing that the dolts on the other end of the phone line are making so much more money than me without actually knowing what it is they're doing. I can't get hired to replace them because my uncle doesn't own the company, I'm not female and hot, I'm not young, fresh and straight out of college with low expectations. In short, I'm overqualified. Almost daily, my counterparts at our LA office tell me that I could so easily move there and find a job right away with my skills, experience, and composure, but do I really want to move to LA? Hell no.

(to be continued)