I am really trying to be a more positive person and avoid negativity, but I just have to rant about work for a moment. There is a point to it though.
I’m very frustrated with my job. It’s hard to describe what I do but much of what I do (and enjoy doing) is implementing processes that save time, increase productivity and eliminate the possibility of human error as much as possible. So I often find myself coming up with ways to save myself time. What might take someone else 8 hours to do I might do in 2. What frustrates me is instead of being rewarded for saving time, I now have to find something else to do for the other 6 hours or I don’t get to pay my bills. That seems backwards to me. If I come up with a way to save 6 hours I will share it with others so they can save time as well. But I have no incentive to. If I save time I have to look forward to more work. I feel I should be compensated on results, not time spent. Otherwise, somebody slow gets paid more than me for the same job.
Also, the company I work for is obsessed with metrics. They spend a great deal of time coming up with ways to collect data so they can pay people to analyze it. We are developing a new tool to track time, productivity, work flow etc. We have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on meetings to discuss it. Finally it is being developed. Several times I have pointed out that they are spending $100 to save $1. They don’t seem to care. The way it works is we spend all this time developing the tool, then pay the worker for the extra time it takes to enter it and then pay a manager to stare at the data for hours to look for problems. In the end they research the problem and find that there was a valid reason for it.
The point of all this is I just found out about a book coming out in two days called “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It”. It’s all about Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’m not sure how it relates to the metrics obsession, but I really wanted to bitch about it. Anyway, this ROWE concept seems perfect for me. I’m pre-ordering the book today. I’m not sure my metrics obsessed bosses would go for it, but maybe it’s time to move on to something else anyway.
We did our first actual t-shirt job the other day. We had done some other shirts of our own design and sold a few, but this was our first actual job for someone else. It was for a school class. It went pretty well, we only messed up one shirt. We are really starting to get the hang of it. I’ve decided I like printing t-shirts much more than I do the other stuff.
I didn’t think to take a pic before they were boxed for delivery, so here’s a pic of the messed up one.
Jessica created the design. Pretty cool huh?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of this blog. I think I originally started it just for the sake of having it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I wasn’t real sure what to do with it. I wanted it to be business related but it turned out to be a way to write about my personal life so friends and family would know what’s going on. I’m not sure anyone besides my mother and this weirdo actually read it, but I like to think I have a huge fan base out there eagerly awaiting my next meaningless post.
So…. I think I will start making it more business related. I will have short posts related to my businesses, web design and promotional products. After a while I may just create a new blog and have one for updating friends and family and one for business. We’ll have to see how it goes.
I don’t think I ever posted it before, but we have started a printing company. Yes, this is in addition to our web design company. The two should complement each other very well. Anyway, we went to training last week for it and we learned a lot. At first I had thought “Why bother? It seems easy enough” but I’m very glad we went. We learned a lot of time saving and problem solving tips and got a lot of good ideas while we were there. We got all kinds of cool stuff too! Everything we printed while there we were able to keep.
After getting home I decided to create my first multi color t-shirt. I had done a few others but they had all been single color which is much easier to do. This one was set up like a two color, but I used two different colors of ink on one screen for a gradient effect. It came out great! I’m very proud. I also designed it myself, with input from my lovely wife. Here’s a pic.
While at training they demoed their vinyl cutter and heat presses. All I could think about for the next few days was vinyl cutters and heat presses. I think I’ll be ordering them this week. Screen printing is great, but it isn’t practical for just a few shirts. A vinyl cutter and heat press is perfect for that. Not to mention I could do signs for businesses, vehicles, etc.
I recently started a Website Design business with my Friend Anthony. Over the last month or so we have been dealing with the hassles of filing with the Arizona Corporation Commission and all that fun stuff. Actually it wasn’t a hassle at all, it was surprisingly easy. Well, we are official now. We are Dynamic Design Enterprises, LLC. We reached a landmark yesterday when we met with our first official client, a Phoenix Hair Salon. Pretty cool. Things are looking good.