So, I have this friend... really, it's a friend. I love my job and work for good people.
Anyway, my friend started at this 'design mill,' which is responsible for a lot of the club flyers so prevalent in South Florida. He took the job out of desperation because the unemployment funds were nearly drained, and he's making about 50% of what he used to make.
Beside the obvious irritation of being underpaid, the designers are worked like crazy and endure weird and bad and illegal practices:
- In an aim toward 'professionalism,' they are required to wear crappy company t-shirts every day.
- The boss blares hip-hop music all day (like, I call there and have a hard time hearing).
- The bosses talk rudely to their customers. (I know this because I placed a print order with them as a test.)
- At the bequest of the bosses, the salespeople sell the company as an ad agency ('tell them we can do anything,' say the bosses) and the designers get in trouble when they don't know how to fulfill the overselling by the salespeople.
- Designers are required to take photos; the attitude is, 'whatever is good enough.'
- My friend believes the computer equipment and software is stolen.
- They will not supply drawing paper or pencils (encouraging direct computer work, which is completely contrary to design principles), so my friend takes his own.
- They tell people they print on 12 pt. paper and print on 10 pt. instead, presumably because most people don't know the difference.
- The bosses require the designers to lift photography off the web (from well-known stock houses, mostly, and we are talking large volume) and use Photoshop to take out watermarks. Again, 'whatever is good enough,' apparently, since everyone knows web images are generally not good enough for printing... so they end up using a series of Gaussian blur and unsharp mask applications to attempt a camouflage of the low quality.
- At the end of the first pay period, one week, my friend was given cash. He also was not given the full amount he should of been given. We anticipated this, so he asked, 'Shouldn't I be filling out some Federal tax paperwork?' (there is no state tax in Florida), to which his boss said, 'Eh, we'll put you on payroll next week.' He still has not been given anything official to fill out -- which I'm sure violates all kinds of labor laws. They don't even have emergency contact information.
Anyway, it's obviously not a good place to work. While he doesn't plan to be there long, work is work... and my friend would like to know what kind of trouble he's risking for himself. He doesn't care about the company, but he doesn't want to endanger himself legally or otherwise.
Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing, or can you think of anything that might happen?
Thanks in advance.
April
+++ april carter +++
Coming soon: www.sugarsock.com
Anyway, my friend started at this 'design mill,' which is responsible for a lot of the club flyers so prevalent in South Florida. He took the job out of desperation because the unemployment funds were nearly drained, and he's making about 50% of what he used to make.
Beside the obvious irritation of being underpaid, the designers are worked like crazy and endure weird and bad and illegal practices:
- In an aim toward 'professionalism,' they are required to wear crappy company t-shirts every day.
- The boss blares hip-hop music all day (like, I call there and have a hard time hearing).
- The bosses talk rudely to their customers. (I know this because I placed a print order with them as a test.)
- At the bequest of the bosses, the salespeople sell the company as an ad agency ('tell them we can do anything,' say the bosses) and the designers get in trouble when they don't know how to fulfill the overselling by the salespeople.
- Designers are required to take photos; the attitude is, 'whatever is good enough.'
- My friend believes the computer equipment and software is stolen.
- They will not supply drawing paper or pencils (encouraging direct computer work, which is completely contrary to design principles), so my friend takes his own.
- They tell people they print on 12 pt. paper and print on 10 pt. instead, presumably because most people don't know the difference.
- The bosses require the designers to lift photography off the web (from well-known stock houses, mostly, and we are talking large volume) and use Photoshop to take out watermarks. Again, 'whatever is good enough,' apparently, since everyone knows web images are generally not good enough for printing... so they end up using a series of Gaussian blur and unsharp mask applications to attempt a camouflage of the low quality.
- At the end of the first pay period, one week, my friend was given cash. He also was not given the full amount he should of been given. We anticipated this, so he asked, 'Shouldn't I be filling out some Federal tax paperwork?' (there is no state tax in Florida), to which his boss said, 'Eh, we'll put you on payroll next week.' He still has not been given anything official to fill out -- which I'm sure violates all kinds of labor laws. They don't even have emergency contact information.
Anyway, it's obviously not a good place to work. While he doesn't plan to be there long, work is work... and my friend would like to know what kind of trouble he's risking for himself. He doesn't care about the company, but he doesn't want to endanger himself legally or otherwise.
Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing, or can you think of anything that might happen?
Thanks in advance.
April
+++ april carter +++
Coming soon: www.sugarsock.com
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