Been busy as fuck, still wound up in freelance projects. At the pace I'm working they should be done soon. Then I've got some major shit to deploy soon after. I took a break from WhatTheDo comics, I recently had the choice of not renewing my hosting plan. I was considering just ending the whole site, I wasn't have fun with it anymore. Yet I decided against it and I have a lot of material written for more comics, even some real story arcs to go along with it.

I've been digitally painting, it's really relaxing. This is a work in process.  

I'm going to make some new shirts soon, it's been a long term learning process of introducing new techniques into screen printing. It's such an exacting process and one error can really fuck everything up.

Canada really seems to like my Nicolas Cage Cat shirt, Thanks Canada, you're the best! here's a link if you're interested. Nicolas Cage Cat Shirt

Last Saturday was my final day at McDonald's. I'm officially just going to pour every ounce of energy into art, animation, shirts and the like.

I liked working at McDonald's but the underlying problem I saw was the disconnect from the management to the workers. The past management showed a lot of compassion and support to the kitchen workers and the service people. It was a very warm environment, it was actually fun, because while it's easy tasks at a fast pace, the people you worked with were quite humble. I've never been in a place where everyone was smiling as much as at McDonald's. Not what you'd imagine, people happy at a fast food job?

Yet in the past few months it got to the point where the energy there became really apathetic, mediocre for even McDonald's standards. We always stressed the importance of getting everything ready for the next person who took over your station, it seemed like people would care or put effort into not fucking over who came next. But now it seems like no one cares in the slightest and I can see it clearly stems directly from the traits of the managers.  

Now I understand to be a good manager you have to be a dick sometimes. It's a part of managing people, you can't make everyone happy all the time, what's best for you isn't always fun. But I think and feel the current management is not suitable for handling people. I really don't think they understand what motivates people or when they overstep their bounds into awkward and uncomfortable activity.

I've had strict managers before who were harsh but still pulled it off because they understood people and had the charisma to pull it off because you could respect them and their wisdom.

Leading by example I think is a very important virtue. Which was non-existent, some managers would arrive 20-30 minutes late but punish other workers for being 5 minutes late. The standards of conduct slowly degraded into "don't give a fuck about anything or anyone" There was no more sense of community.

We had an "Attendance Contest for the Month of November", The rules were if you have perfect attendance you get put into a raffle for a $50 gift card. Merely 5 days into the raffle contest roughly 75% of the employees were removed from the list. That, and the store manager misspelled "you're" as "your" throughout the entire contest rules.    

- BPremo