Frustrated!

"If it's going up to the 12th floor, we'd better use small words." So said my boss at our team status this morning. The 12th floor is where the Powers That Be congregate when the clients review our creative. My boss is frustrated because he's actually been hands-on for this particular project, the first time in a long time, and he's not used to all the changes I've been dealing with week in/week out for the past few years.

But I, too, am frustrated -- frustrated that he said this in open forum. I'm afraid his attitude ("they're heathens when it comes to creative and we have to dumb it down for them") will bleed through to the rest of the team. And that would be a bad thing. For while we all like to fancy ourselves creative geniuses, the fact is, we perform a service. One that our clients pay a pretty penny for.

Imagine you take a shirt to the dry cleaner and you specify "no starch." The kid behind the counter asks, "Really? No starch? You sure?" You repeat, once again, "No starch." How would you feel if the kid starts acting as though you're stupid and you don't know a damn thing about the shirts you wear or the service you're paying for?

I have a healthy ego and I don't like seeing my work watered down. I often believe the changes they make weaken my work and its ability to produce results for them. But I also want to keep this job. Plus, there's a moral imperative here. It's THEIR money. We work FOR them. They deserve to get what they ask for, even if we don't agree.