Listening: The Fragile: Right, NIN
I'd rather be: paid more
Desiring: my second language to be Russian, or maybe Esperanto

ARG. I'm doing Spanish work in a field I know nothing about. AGAIN.


It's tough to explain how this is an issue, especially right now when I'm so ticked off. But if you imagine the editors where I work to be tiered into three tiers I'd be in the second one. I want to be in the third tier - the top tier, because 1) the pay, 2) the prestige, 3) the specialization and 4) at the second tier you're expected to be thoroughly flexible in the sort of work you do which can range anywhere from minor copyediting (turning "it's" into "its" etc) to researching Web site marketing structures and suggesting search engine keywords to maximize targetted search volume. It's complicated, but just understand that my work can go from something braindead monkeys can do to really fucking complicated, in the space of a few minutes.

The pay structure originally was devised when the second tier was supposed to be doing slightly harder work than the first tier, but not as hard as third tier work. Since then the job description went all to hell and we're supposed to do *everyone's* job for the same median range of pay they originally designed this job for.

If that weren't bad enough it strongly appears that I'm the only Spanish-competent editor in the second tier. This means that while I normally only work on sites that sell health & beauty stuff - think Mary Kay, pharmacies, colloidal silver (ah yes, I sell snake oil!) - I can get any other kind Web site to do my hardest work on in Spanish. I don't know the first thing about real estate, but here I am trying to figure out how to write Spanish listings for people buying and selling homes in Florida.

Like anyone my Spanish gets rusty from lack of use, so it's annoying that my regular use is for work that a) is much tougher than that of coworkers who are paid more than I am, b) I pretty much have to invent my own support structure for and c) is still supposed to be created within the time and quality expectations of English work.

URG. *slams head repeatedly on the desk*


uh, that's not helping.

My manager isn't a lot of help. I regularly have to go over his head for basic things. I have the option of looking for local classes in Spanish business-speak. I don't know if my manager knows or approves of this, but I don't entirely care. He's stonewalled me from advancing before because I can handle more shit than most people. I don't know if someone was blowing smoke up my ass or what but I was once told I wasn't promoted because I was one of only a few people who could finish a high level of quality work in a day. How the hell do I tell management not to assign me more work in Spanish until they promote and/or give me a raise?

I'm still waiting to hear back on whether we'll even bother to build our own resources for Spanish work in the US Marketplace or if will let the Spanish team work on it. This brings up a few issue having to do with the slight differences in Spanish Spanish and the Mexican Spanish I know. (The Spanish most people learn is Castillian - spoken in Madrid and exported through the conquests - there are other forms of Spanish but they aren't Spanish. I can't begin to understand Basque or Catalan but they're considered Spanish because the people are in Spain, much to the disgust of said people.) It also makes it tough since the work the Spanish team would do theoretically would be isolated from the US Marketplace. The Spanish team will (theoretically) only do work on stuff that will show up on our Spanish site (coming soon!).

Anyway. Until something is figured out I'm stuck handling any second tier work that's in Spanish. It really irks me that I don't get paid extra for this extra responsibility.

Growing up I was promised all kinds of advantages because I could speak two languages flawlessly.

So where the hell are they?