Wednesday, May 07, 2008

You know you take your job too seriously when...

...you find yourself fighting back tears when a restaurant manager gets in your face about whether or not you can cut a burrito in half for a food shoot.

In my defense, there were mind-boggling amounts of douchebaggery goin' on there that had nothing to do with MY presence this particular afternoon, but damn.. I will NOT cry over a burrito. Jesus.

Do I need a vacation? I think I need a vacation.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

No crying over a burrito!
Stupid restaurant manager.

Becky said...

My mom always said it's no use crying over a split burrito. ;-)

Yes, you need a vacation. I think everybody does, frankly, including most of the people I'm working for right now.

Carl said...

Why weren't you allowed to cut the burrito? Is it the policy of the restaurant to only allow burritos to be portrayed intact?

I assume you mean that the restaurant provided the burrito for this food shoot and at the time they still retained ownership of the burrito. Because if they presumed to restrict your cutting of a burrito you purchased then that CLEARLY is a violation of some rights or something. Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact the ACLU and hear what they have to say about it.

Chunky Photojournalist Barbie said...

Yes, the restaurant provided the burrito. They insisted it could not be cut because it is not served cut. I told the lady that if any customer came into the restaurant and complained that the burrito was cut in the photo they saw in our Life and Style section but not on their plate, that I would personally pay for said customer's dinner. She was not amused.

She also refused to allow me to garnish a bowl of chili with a single, well-placed tortilla chip, because "we don't serve it with a tortilla chip in it." They are a franchise and they have some kind of contract with the owner about the way they food can be represented.

I get that, I do, but the things they were insisting on looked bad- Woot! A plain tortilla slapped on a plate!- but what frosted my cookies was when she grabbed the plate off the table and said she'd have to take the burrito away if I didn't do it her way. She called me "honey" four times.

Then she called the owner to tattle on me, which was unnecessary. It was when she asked to cut the burrito in half for me when the shoot was all finished so I "could see it was ugly inside" that I realized there was a limit to the amount of frustration and energy I could expend over a f*cking burrito.

Unknown said...

I HATE it when people call me honey and they're rude like that. (although now I work outside of Baltimore where they call you "hon," but somehow that's different.) I always want to say things like "You know this is essentially free advertising, right? Just shut up and let me do my job."
Of course, that doesn't always go over very well. :)
Any vacation in sight before August? Maybe just a couple of days off in a row?

Cara said...

I'm sorry about the stress. And you're also planning a wedding, and that adds work stress ten-fold. Call in sick for at least a day before August. Seriously. You don't want to drive into the side of a bus the day before your wedding, like some people I can name here.