Friday, February 18, 2005

sorta good, sorta bad

The good news is I've just been hired as the both the Development Director AND Public Relations Manager for a not-for-profit organization. It's good because words like "Director" and "Manager" in one's job title look good on a resume, should I ever be forced to get real job. In addition, even though the money's not great, it will be enough to let me completely pay off my federal student loans by next August, before I return to England and go further into debt. The bad news is that I'm committed to staying in this one-horse dung heap with my parents until next September. Realistically, I wasn't going to get the $$$ together to show up in York by April anyway, but I hate admitting defeat. I also hate paying the storage fees for all my belongings which are still sitting in a storage shed in Old Trafford, but what can you do? So now I get to spend the spring and summer begging corporations for money in support of, well, I can't tell you who's hired me because I can't have anyone connecting the organization with the other crap that I publish on this site. For the purposes of anonymity I'll refer to them as the FSM, the Fuzzy Sado-Massochists. (If you knew who they really were you would piss your pants at that.) They're a good bunch, but by and large totally fucking incompetent. My first job as Development Director was to fix the pie chart that illustrated what portions of our budget come from what sources. This chart appeared on the first page of the promotions packet that was sent out to hundreds of potential donors. On this chart, the wedge illustrating 6% was twice the size of the wedge illustrating 13%, and the two wedges illustrating 32% each were drastically different sizes. Now, if you were a prominant local businessperson, would you give your hard-stolen money to an organization that is unable to a, do math, b, use MS Excel, or c, proofread? I sure as fuck wouldn't. And it goes on from there. As the new PR manager I get to write all the press releases and sleep with all the freelance critics to guarantee good press.
Me: "I need to get some good press coverage."
Critic: "I could use a good press myself. Dinner at 8? You're buying."
Yep. Can't think of a better way to waste 6 months of my life. Jesus Mary and Joseph get me out of here. I just have to keep telling myself that I'm doing it for the money, I'm doing it for the money. I love being a charitable whore.

1 comment:

ZB said...

Could be worse man. You could be playing dancing queen for a living, stuck in a town you hate (okay so you are) and with a german holding the key to your future in his demanding hands...