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Good art takes time.

Unfortunately the new boss preferred impossible deadlines and constant criticism.

Then rain threatened their biggest mural.

He ordered everyone back onto the scaffolding anyway.

Check out the story’s conclusion below.

Don’t stop painting the mural? sure thing, boss

For the last three years, I have worked as a muralist for a mural company. It’s hard work, but also rewarding, as I was beautifying public spaces. I had a good boss.

He was a skilled painter who worked alongside us on big projects in addition to providing us with plenty of financial incentives and encouragement.

Unfortunately, he retired last year and gave full control of the company to his business partner.

It immediately became a mess. The business partner controlled the administration side of the company.

He was not a painter and didn’t understand the work it took. He would overbook clients and overpromise on completion dates.

He never offered us incentives and would only berate us for not getting jobs done quickly enough.

But he thought he knew better and didn’t listen to them…

We tried to tell him that the old boss had always encouraged us to take our time and deliver the best mural, as the company’s reputation rested on the quality of our work.

We also tried to explain that as artists, we want to be proud of the work that we put out there.

He brushed it off with: “You’re paid to finish jobs. Just get it done.”

This was incredibly demoralizing, and after two months of churning out rushed work, we were burned out. One of our four muralists quit.

The final straw came three months later; our company won a huge bid to paint the side of a five-story-tall building using my design.

I told the boss that it would take us five weeks to complete; however, a week before the project was due to start, he told us that we had three weeks.

They tried reasoning with him.

We protested, citing that we’re down one muralist, safety issues, weather changes, and the complexity of the design.

He, of course, told us that the contract had been signed and brushed off our concerns.

He did, however, offer us financial incentives for overtime work this time, and knowing that there was nothing we could do, we accepted it. I simplified the design and we planned to stay late.

The weather got bad as predicted. There were a few days of rain when we barely got work done.

We fell behind and told the boss that he had to get us an extension.

Our client was nice enough to grant another week, but our boss was mad. He would show up to the job site regularly just to rush us.

Things reached a boiling point.

On the third week, we were working when a light drizzle started. We were waiting in our cars, hoping that it would pass when the boss showed up.

The moment he saw us, he started accusing us of being lazy. To quote: “This is why we’re falling behind!.”

One of my coworkers said through gritted teeth, “Can’t you see it’s raining?”

But before we could explain why we couldn’t paint in the rain, the boss yelled: “If you’re scared of a little drizzle, you shouldn’t be a muralist. Get back to work.”

My coworker shot me a look and I knew immediately: the malicious compliance was on.

The three of us got back on the scaffolding and began working. The boss smugly said “see, that wasn’t so hard” and drove off. We kept our smiles to ourselves.

He was about to see what a rushed job looks like.

When the boss returned that afternoon, he was horrified.

The rain had washed the wet paint down the building, leaving paint streaks dripping onto the rest of the mural.

Basically, the whole mural– three weeks’ worth of work– was ruined.

We noticed him staring slack-jawed, but we just kept painting. Then he called us down and cursed us out with all sorts of profanity.

When asked “What the **** were you guys thinking???,” my coworker replied: “Well… you were the one who told us to do it.”

My boss’ face turned beet red. Then he asked “Well how the hell are we going to fix this???”

My coworker simply replied “You mean, how are you going to fix it. We’ve decided to all quit.”

Somehow, he was blindsided.

And indeed we had while we were working in that rain. We packed up our tools as the boss went from yelling to begging to yelling again.

We just ignored him. That was the last day that we were on site. I felt so relieved the moment I got home.

The Aftermath:

I got a call a week later from my old boss. I was ready to tell him that I won’t come back to work, but it turned out that he just wanted to check in on me.

He apologized for what happened. He also told me that my new boss lost the contract, and had to fork out the money to repaint the whole wall blank again so that another muralist could take over.

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The company is floundering now. The new boss can’t find anyone to replace us, and he probably never will.

He learned a hard lesson.

What he didn’t realize was that finding even one good muralist willing to work for a company is difficult, let alone a team.

Most muralists are more than happy to self-employ.

More importantly, not many people have the skills and patience, as well as physical abilities, to create beautiful large-scale artworks from great heights.

I give it another few months before the company completely shuts down.

My coworkers and I still keep in touch. They got a few mural projects in the work from clients that they knew during their time with the company.

I help out now and then, but I’m still pretty burnt from the experience, so I think I’ll look for other jobs for now.

That was nuclear.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

Or humans.

True.

Yup.

That was awesome.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who made sure that firing him would be a major inconvenience.

Then he can do it himself.

The rain destroyed three weeks of work, and the entire mural team quit when their boss demanded a solution.

He lost the contract, paid to repaint the wall, and discovered skilled artists were not nearly as replaceable as imagined.

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Author

Chris Allen