Some how all the enlisted personnel were under the direction of one officer......the Photographer.

For less sarcasm .... sorry I don't have less unless you want Les Morre then read on

I developed a dislike of any college educated person due to the exposure to officers while enlisted. It seemed that somehow 4 years of partying through school while I was working entitled "rubes" to come and direct companies and divisions of people that could tell the difference from shit or shine-ola.

my grandfather came and visited. He was disappointed my series of jobs since leaving the service. I informed him that I was trained to change jobs every 6-8 months. He informed me that I should settle in the next job and stay there so that I could discover the benefits of tenure.
I came to Murealism from a friends suggestion, and upon walking in to the studio I was immediately taken by how much I could learn. I informed Bennett Hall that I would be there on Monday at 8. It took him a day or so before he actually hired me.
I worked for him 6ish years and was at that time his longest ever employee. I still employ aspects of the period in my today life.
Screw the earthquake. It was the beginning of the end for so many arts in the Bay area.

Started as a printer and was hesitantly employed due to over-qualification. In the 1 year I was there I solved many problems and fixed systems.
The QC gal kept the details of the processes in her head and I refuted the practice. She slid her motorcycle under a bus and as eventually discharged for falsification of her ability to return to work.
To everyone's surprise..(mine too) I became the next supervisor due to US Navy training in the chemicals and processes.
1st thing I did was close the shop area and inventory and organize the HUGE mess.
2nd thing I did was interview each team member under my direction and then order business cards with whatever title they wanted, and hold them to their area of expertise.
3rd thing I did was teach each of them the "quarter rule" so that when reviews came for the rest of their lives they could run the math in their heads and know when to say "Thank You" and when to negotiate.


You might want to know the "Quarter rule".
$.25 (a quarter) and hour is worth aprox $525.00 a year so a dollar an hour is about $2k minus taxes.

Laid-off for 16 months tween 2002-2003 while lab reorganized from wet-film to digital.
Seemed that I learned what tenure was about and was then laid-off. I now realize that tenure is for educators, doctors and scientists.
The details here are to numerous and "detailed" to be effective.
* Brought multi-dimension (from Murealism) into the presentation of sales.
* Developed and perfected manual methods of high production to Trade-show graphic processes.
* Wrote production manuals for safety on various equipment that were lacking.
* Trade-show Graphic Manual becomes digital in team effort...manual becomes sales tool and sales change from 2-4 million to 14 million per year.
* Became purchasing clerk and established PC based reports and rapid-demand feedback to dept heads
* Established a digital map of warehousing and Just-in-time purchasing practices
* OOPS laid off via Ideological digression over "annual reviews vs pay increases" my take - a review informs and can happen many times in a year......Income reviews are separate and can happen independently of performance reviews.
* Come back home to be a "regular guy" under supervision of others that will not be named.
Began practicing Kaisian methods from reading. Soon outpacing all others with little effort. Team comes to find out "WTF". They are mystified since I was gone and they stayed. I begin a grass-roots method of action perfection.
* Performance jumps and I am asked to take over the banner printing area.
* Dramatically change all parameters so that sales, Pre-press, and production align, Invent some jigs for productivity and a $60K dept becomes $4.2 million.
Added Flatbed printing to the banner printing...struggled greatly for a year while Owners struggled with justification for digital cutting machine. Kongsberg I-Cut finally acquired based on labor rates and sales demands (ROI actually has numbers)
* Reassigned to finishing and begin to apply advanced kaisian methods to developing sales fields such as Billboard graphics, Dye-Sub textiles, and Kit fulfillment as well as direction in shipping/receiving.

Things are going well, we have applied Six-sigma methods to the full production process and re-defined the roles of sales to pre-press to production.

Owner sells company and all people in the production transformation are laid-off.

Unemployed and not giving up. My Mother had come to work at CCC and was let go the same as myself. We looked at what we knew (June 2008) and had witnessed and determined that the mail-order Dye-sub business was the way to go since this was a beginning industry. We made a slight mistake and hired a designer that my wife said was wrong. During this time we sat in my basement office for 6-8 hours together learn by trial-and-error how to actually design our website.
Unfortunately the "build-it-and-they-will-come" did not work. Just as we finished the process of the web development (to find out the later in the year it would not work) I was able to find employment.

To express my full feelings might be detrimental to my situation. However, the rawness of the situation will be explained.
In the Ink industry the Pressmen, and letterpress men are gods, Bindery persons are honored and everybody else is "something else".
Warehouse/shipping is "idiots and morons" as I was to find out by the then Plant Manager. Why? We couldn't get jobs with education.
SO, I was threatened almost daily with job-security, and given under-handed direction with mis-leading information that lead to shipping mistakes.
I should have quit....did I mention the A-hole in charge of the plant was 24?
Instead I wanted to make things better. I brought in my own PC so I could inventory parts that we had to pull, and set up a warehouse system that....today still exists.
{before the eve of Sept 29, 2009 I was clued that the A***hle in charge was taking pictures of the garbage to write-up members of the crew)
I went in early to diffuse the situation and due to a series of mis-actions and mismanagement a situation of emptying a 600lb container into the dumpster resulted in my falling from a 8"+ height to land on my head.
I had serious problems, and trying to straighten my self out was not working. Finally the workman's comp started as I found out that I had two aneurysms and thankfully the bleeding had stopped or ....Else.
I soon was suggested by the owners of CPC to work in "Digital Services" where I excelled since it was a large part of my background instead of a mere portion.
After a couple of years I was moved to Pre-Press. Now during all this time I had started going to college to learn Web Graphic Design.
Here I was given an opportunity to further develop my skills using the same programs that I was learning in school so that I could be a better part of the CPC family.

I have learned how to never be at the mercy of a profiteering
"Web Designer " ever again. My goal prior to this and especially after the first level of degree is to provide a website for my wife and I that meets our needs, from here on it is to accomplish the desire of clients that come as they may.
(not really, I want to blow their socks off!!)