bookpublishing

A very interesting thing happened this week in regard to my recent promotion (if that’s what you call it) in my company. As explained in an earlier post, I was recently offered a job that’s more aligned with my interests at the company and offers a greater challenge and more responsibility. I had been working part of the Copy Desk, reviewing a copy of each book before it went to the printer. As part of a two-person team, my superiors were worried about finding a replacement. Therefore, I offered to continue my work on the Copy Desk until they found a replacement. After about a month or two (it sure felt like a long time), they hired someone–then we had layoffs and a hiring freeze and they had to tell the girl they could no longer hire her. So since then they’ve been kind of scrambling to figure out what to do.

On Friday I learned that my colleague, Meredith (who I’ve mentioned before on this blog), was asked by two of my superiors if she would take my job at the Copy Desk. This was a bit of a surprise because Meredith has never expressed interest in that side of the editorial department, but not a big surprise because of the current flustered state of the company. So it puts her in a bit of a bind. In her current job, she has had a hand in acquiring new books and has successfully published an intriguing new true crime book about the Cheshire, Connecticut, home invasion that occurred last year. She has been gaining ground her in acquisitions experience, but if she were to move to the Copy Desk, she would be forced to give that up. On the other hand, working on the Copy Desk gives you direct contact with every book we publish. It’s very detail-oriented as you are the last person to make manuscript corrections and are responsible for finding any remaining errors. You are also the first one to blame if errors sneak through. As a detail-oriented person myself, I’ve really enjoyed this job. Meredith and I have discussed it, however, and it’s not really the job she hoped to be doing at this stage, especially because it takes her away from the work she enjoyed.

Despite the fact that if she stepped in my old job, it would really help me to move on to my new one, I told her that in truth I would be upset if they asked me to give up the job I liked to take on one I didn’t. They didn’t offer any incentive for her to switch, other than she’d move from hourly to salaried (which doesn’t affect her pay or benefits). But turning it down is a risk because it may look like she isn’t a team player. The compromise we came up with is to ask if she can work on the Copy Desk part time and continue her work as Editorial Coordinator part time. If she can juggle it, it seems like a good way to go: She can make her superiors happy while also continuing the work she likes. A hell of a lot of work though, unfortunately. I do hope she doesn’t turn it down entirely. It would be my first instinct, and was probably hers, but when I discussed this with my mother today (she was a Human Resources Director), she maintained that it would look bad for her to refuse and wouldn’t help her get future promotions or salary hikes.

It’s definitely a tough position to be in. And none of it would have happened if we hadn’t had the layoffs/hiring freeze! So I’m hopeful that the company can turn things around. And also that Meredith gets the best experience out of whichever job she chooses (or both, if that’s the case). Like my former boss, Josh, told me when he heard I’ve been balancing both jobs: At least now you can answer that “How do you handle a large workload?” interview question for the rest of your life.

Does anybody else out there have any advice or words of wisdom? Anybody been in this sort of situation before?

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