Wednesday, January 20, 2010

As A Concept I Like It

Does anyone else watch the Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie? It's a show on the Home & Garden network - naturally - where this Australian landscape designer renovates backyards. I've only seen two or three episodes and I already want to punch the guy in the head. (I know, it's Jane berating another television show, shocker.)
But this show illustrates the exact reason why I left the design business. (Plus it has the added irritation of all television reality shows. How do you get picked for these things? And who pays for it all? the sponsors? Do they get a say in who is chosen then? How much of the drama is scripted? Or edited?)
Maybe it's all in the editing but this Jamie person comes on the scene with the client, declares himself the seer of all that they need and then hands down the commandments from on high to the plebs who work in his office. He doesn't spend a lot of time on site, he doesn't listen to their suggestions, he doesn't acknowledge that there might be a problem in getting a 6-foot item through a 3-foot space, he rarely helps with the labor and often adds items to the list without changing the timeline and then when the team has worked it all out without his being there, Jamie takes the credit and hosts a party.
I was one of those plebs for a long while and I did enjoy a lot of aspects of the profession. I made some good friends and even made good money but I am not sorry to not be working with attitudes like that anymore. Some of you may think I'm whining (I surely am) or being illogical (highly likely) but when you take that kind of crap every day for seven years it starts to wear on a person.
Maybe I just had bad luck with the offices I've worked in, maybe it's not them it's me and I'm too sensitive but I have never met a designer (that's architect, landscape, interior etc.) that I liked as both a person AND a professional. It's either one or the other. And I didn't want to become a person I didn't like. So I left.
I may watch the show again, I like the idea of it, and it might give me ideas of what to do with our postage stamp of a backyard or I might not watch again. It depends on if Tarzan is there to keep me from throwing my shoe through the television screen.

This is me and some of us were made for the 9 to 5 world. And some just were not.

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