Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose

I tend to like the people I work with, I tend to really like the people who I work for/interact with, I tend to wholly and thoroughly disagree with my managers.

In an old example, when I taught, I liked my fellow instructors, they were always helpful and kind. I thought my students were great, even the problematic ones. They were generally nice, often inquisitive, creative, energetic, everything you could ask for. No they weren't all perfect, none of them were, but they learned, and that was enjoyable to watch and they treated me and each other kindly and respectfully. The administration, well, they were wonderful at being bureaucrats, and I barely dealt with them, but any time it came to getting anything accomplished or done, I just stayed away because it was too annoying for me to deal with for pittance of a salary, and with my job title and experience I wouldn't have been any help anyway.

In my current example, my co-workers, well occasionally problematic (reporters have issues with getting anything done in a timely manner or realizing that anyone else in the world needs time to plan) they are generally nice people. My management, ugh, they are nice people as people, but certain bits of reality don't seem to compute to them. They recently bought the latest version of Photoshop for the entire office. This amounts to a hefty chunk of change. They forgot, yep forgot, to get copies for the photographers. Really, why do the photographers need Photoshop? And now the art director, who may or may not have done the forgetting in the first place, is trying to get our copies budgeted for, but it's not going rapidly, or much at all. Again, photographers, Photoshop, why? Okay, whatever, except that they've actually never provided the photographers with Photoshop. We just happened to have it when we started to so why upgrade us along with the rest of the staff? This isn't a first time for this. It's a bit....insulting.

On the other hand, I have subjects that request me, me specifically to photograph them and their home because they like my work so much. Nice warm fuzzy feeling there. And I took photos today of two lovely and nice women who were generally happy to have their photos taken. Great. Plus, when we were done taking photos of them with their brownies from an 1890s recipe, they had a wrapped tin of them ready for me. While technically, technically, I shouldn't have accepted them, that whole receiving payment from subjects thing and journalistic detachment, in this case I didn't think it would do any harm and I didn't want to insult them, so I accepted their brownies. It's nice to be so appreciated. (FYI - the photo isn't of the brownies I received, as it's been almost two hours so mine are almost gone. If you ever need your dessert guarded, I'm here for you. My stomach is the Fort Knox of the dessert community.)