The Reveal

A lot of you have been shocked and curious about me handing in my resignation so suddenly. And I'd like to thank all of you for the concern and wishes you've sent me for success in my new undertaking. It's all really much appreciated.

Before I start on this female fat burner thing that I have to do, I guess I do owe you guys the reason for my sudden decision. Let me begin from the start. I can already hear you guys groaning away and going:

'Oh no, not another one of those darn long winded posts again!' (LOL)

Well, I'll try to keep this short and not delve too much into it from starting from my birth, teenage years and right into adulthood ... LOL! There are some parts of this decision too personal to talk about so I'll get straight to the gist of it.

Suffice to say, I was absolutely fed up of things here. As much as it seemed like it was a sudden and hasty decision it was totally the opposite. I've been playing with this resignation issue for quite a while now and after discussing it thoroughly with wifey, I decided that it's time to quit this place.

I've been in the advertising industry for god knows how long that I've lost track of how many years already. I remember I started fresh out after I got my Diploma in Graphic Design donkeys years ago.

A fresh face young 'un with so much of promise and anticipation at taking the first steps of fulfilling my dreams. I've always wanted to be in advertising for as long as I could remember, well that was after I wanted to be a soldier, a priest and a break dancer (LOL!). And I enjoyed every bit of the journey to being where I am today.

Skip a couple of centuries later and here I am at this present company. When I first joined this agency, it was a fresh new medium sized agency. Me and a couple of other former employees were the pioneer people in it. My boss had other businesses.

And she had loads of her customers asking her if she knew people who could do advertising. Being the opportunistic minded person that she is, she decided to open up her own agency. I attended the interview, got the job and was happy to be starting in a brand new fresh agency where me and the pioneer staff could set the culture for the company.

My boss doesn't know anything about advertising agencies so she was sorely depending on the people she hired to advise her. I was a bit overwhelmed when I first joined cos the people around me looked so much more experienced and capable than I was. In fact I was even intimidated by their experience or rather so called experience.

There were three account managers including me, an account executive and one desk top artist (I doubled as a DTP to help out in the initial stages) and a really useless copywriter! LOL! I could tell how useless she was on the first day itself. Some of the things she did would have you rolling on the floor in laughter gasping for breath. I'll post about her one day :D

My boss is a demanding woman. Very demanding, work wise. And our job responsibility back then was to bring in new accounts. That was to be expected seeing as how we were so new with no clients of our own. We all had to prove ourselves and had a target to achieve.

Now, while I was skeptical at the actual amount of business I could bring in, I nevertheless did my best and started bringing in new accounts and more than achieving the targets given.

Unfortunately the other two 'experienced' account managers were really not who or what they claimed they were capable of doing and didn't bring in one single account till the day they were both terminated. They were more interested in becoming head of the client service department.

After they were gone, I was the sole AM and was pretty happy with that. Now I could do my work without office politicking which I abhor. Then things took a downward slide. Clients started giving us less work and I took a reduction in salary, which was okay cos times were bad.

Then things picked up again. We had some pretty big accounts. Government agencies, corporate clients, established developers and at that time we had a much smaller team. I helped out doing so many things. Client servicing, production, artwork, deliveries, you name it, I did it. I didn't complain. It's my nature to help out. I'm not the kind who only does what my job scope says. Besides it was for the company anyway.

I even brought in a few more accounts. There were times when I suffered through the night. Worked countless hours on weekends, Sundays, holidays and even going without sleep for three days at time during projects but I never complained. This was the life I chose and I was happy to be doing it.

But the funny thing was, though the jobs were on going non stop, my boss started terminating staff, people I could work with and could get the desired results out of them and started hiring useless and unreliable people. People I could not count on. People like the three stooges. Even before the three stooges, the people she hired were hopeless. No one would and even wanted to stay back late and lets not even talk about coming back to work on weekends.

I had no choice. I was committed to my clients and the company. I did whatever it took to please my clients and get things done for them, to the point of pampering them. I did everything by MYSELF. I didn't ask anyone's help cos they're so undependable. And what do I get out of it?

Nothing. I'm still with the same salary scheme since it was reduced a few years back. And I've been here for 6 whole years at that! And when I asked her about a revision of my salary, she said she'll think about it. Think about it!!! Can you believe that? I've put my heart and soul in this company. I've defended this company when clients say we're lousy and slow sometimes. I've lied for this company that I'll probably end up in the deepest recesses of hell.

And none of that is appreciated. I know I'm worth so much more that what's she paying me and I think she's taking advantage of the fact that I'm a very accommodating person. Sometimes too accommodating that I've even had arguments with wifey about it (yes, wifey and me do argue at times ... hehehe ...).

And up to a couple of weeks ago, I totally snapped with everything that's going on here. I made up my mind to quit but had to really weigh the consequences. It's not easy getting a new job, especially with the current economic situation but I'm glad I do have job when I leave here. Whether it's a better job or not remains to be seen but I know I'll give the same amount of commitment to that job that I gave to this one. I just hope it was the right decision, that's all.

In a nutshell I was totally fed up of being used with no appreciation for the work I do. So there, that's my reason for the sudden resignation :D I know I said this wouldn't be a long post but hey, I'm in advertising and you should never believe anything people from the advertising industry tell you. After all it's my job to con you into buying something you don't really need, right ... LOL!
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