Letter to my colleague that I will never send

I keep trying to find organization with you, keep trying to find balance with you. It’s pointless of course. Everything is always going to go down to the wire. But what makes me angry is that I feel you have no respect for our time, or our limited resources. You are perfectly happy to have us spend 8 solid hours on 4 pages making a proposal “the best thing ever” way above and beyond what is necessary. It’s necessary for me to spend 15 hours working a proposal which should take 4-5 hours because you can’t organize your thoughts before you give it over to us. You schedule our time, then don’t deliver the project when you say you will, forcing me to juggle our schedule all over again.

From where I sit, trying to juggle multiple projects and find the time and resources to service everyone’s account to the best of my ability, to “be creative” on demand with no time to think anything through in an intelligent way. I am expected to “work magic”, but I’m not a magician. In the midst of all this stress, you come in with grand expectations and no regard for creative’s time.

I’ve tried until I’m blue to address these issues with you time and time again. You’ve improved on scheduling, and yet still the frustration persists. You make the argument that everything you do is somehow “special” and that the work should always be first class. While it’s a nice theory, and one I would support on strategically important projects with a reasonable lead time, it’s simply NOT reasonable to make these demands on last minute projects, Nor is it fair to the rest of the company that their projects should suffer so that yours can shine. Especially in light of the fact that they have the respect to conclude their thoughts before engaging our assistance, you do not. They have the respect to schedule their work ahead of time, and allow us sufficient time to return the deliverable. You do not.

The cumulative effect of your work style is that you have exhausted my patience and understanding of your challenges, and have driven me to a place where I am constantly angry and frustrated with you.