Not so fast!
Well, my winning glory lasted about 5 hours before Miss America was stripped of her crown.... Or, you might say, before Al Gore had the presidency stolen from him by those darn electoral votes.
That was me Friday afternoon just after 4 PM when I got a call from the other co-chair of the Art @ Work exhibit telling me that she'd gotten a call from someone in HR who told her that the votes had been calculated wrong. And, to re-do it & "fix it". Which meant that after a re-tally that I hadn't won 1st place after all and she had to send out another email correcting the winning art works. Sucks to be me. The one who had gotten 2nd originally was now 1st. And the 2 that had tied for 3rd before weren't in the top 3 at all. There was another completely different winner for 3rd.
"How could this be?" you ask? Well, the voting, not the tallying, wasn't done right from the start. It was supposed to be by category. But someone in HR (same person that called for the re-count, like it was a darn presidential election) didn't think that everyone in the firm would understand how to vote for their favorite photograph, their favorite 3D piece & their favorite painting. Duh! Just dumb it down for everyone, why don't we. Go against the rules because you think we're all mentally retarded. It's only a firm full of people with law degrees, for Pete's sake! So, before the show as we're setting up, I ask "Aren't we hanging & displaying things by category?" when I noticed things were just being hung randomly & all mixed up. This person says to me, "No, it's a better idea to just vote for the top 3." "Out of the whole show? What happened to the categories?" I ask, trying to figure out what the change she's talking about making will really mean for the whole show. "Well, we don't have enough for each category."
Well, that shouldn't make any difference. So what if we only had 1 or 2 for a couple of the categories. Good for them! Less competition! We're still supposed to have one from each go to Union Station. Should it really be their fault if nobody else in the firm entered something in their category??
And, it's just even more unfair that only 1 of those top three would go to Union Station (because suddenly people could vote for 3 photos & nothing else if they wanted to), rather than one from each category like how it was supposed to be. And in even further unfairness, each of those 3 votes were weighted, rather than just being 3 plain votes. The 1st vote counted more than the 3rd. Thus, when the winning person received 20 votes for #1, and I received 16 votes for #2, it wasn't that I received 4 less votes. I'm actually not sure how far behind I was in #1 votes. who knows? But I was the one who had the most #2 votes. If this makes any sense. I still had most votes overall with 43. 43 people wrote down my number, #11, on one of those 3 lines on their ballots. I was still 9 ahead in overall votes. 43 people still liked my work well enough to put the number down. Versus only 34 people overall voting for the "#1" winner at some point on their ballots. The weight of the votes is screwy. If it had just been done by category everything would be fine & fair. And, the #1 winner was still a photograph. Someone said to me (though still thinking the whole thing stinks), well, if it was by category then it doesn't mean that you would have won in that category still. But, that's not the point. At least it would have been fair for everyone & I would have been okay with that. I wouldn't have gone through half the day thinking & believing I'd won! My feelings wouldn't have been hurt. I'm a big girl. I didn't even expect to win to begin with! I wouldn't have been a "sore loser" if it had been done right from the beginning & I'd lost still. So, that's not the point at all. I feel bad for the person who did the mosaic plate. They would have, and should have, gone to Union Station because they were the favorite in the 3D category. They won more votes than any of the other entrants in that category, and originally, got 3rd place even out of votes overall. It's just not fair for anyone else either & I feel equally as bad for them.
But, even thought it's a big deal for us artists, it's not a big enough deal for the rest of the firm to do anything about it & make it right or stick with the original vote count, so we just have to let it go. And I'll just try to get in a real gallery on my own. Where things are admitted based on their artistic value or because the artist is talented, not by office politics and Human Resources sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, deciding for everyone what our mental capacity for voting is. The Art @ Work really was a great concept, but unfortunately our firm is incapable of pulling something like this off without making it more complex than it should be. They turned a really fun thing into a big mess.
That was me Friday afternoon just after 4 PM when I got a call from the other co-chair of the Art @ Work exhibit telling me that she'd gotten a call from someone in HR who told her that the votes had been calculated wrong. And, to re-do it & "fix it". Which meant that after a re-tally that I hadn't won 1st place after all and she had to send out another email correcting the winning art works. Sucks to be me. The one who had gotten 2nd originally was now 1st. And the 2 that had tied for 3rd before weren't in the top 3 at all. There was another completely different winner for 3rd.
"How could this be?" you ask? Well, the voting, not the tallying, wasn't done right from the start. It was supposed to be by category. But someone in HR (same person that called for the re-count, like it was a darn presidential election) didn't think that everyone in the firm would understand how to vote for their favorite photograph, their favorite 3D piece & their favorite painting. Duh! Just dumb it down for everyone, why don't we. Go against the rules because you think we're all mentally retarded. It's only a firm full of people with law degrees, for Pete's sake! So, before the show as we're setting up, I ask "Aren't we hanging & displaying things by category?" when I noticed things were just being hung randomly & all mixed up. This person says to me, "No, it's a better idea to just vote for the top 3." "Out of the whole show? What happened to the categories?" I ask, trying to figure out what the change she's talking about making will really mean for the whole show. "Well, we don't have enough for each category."
Well, that shouldn't make any difference. So what if we only had 1 or 2 for a couple of the categories. Good for them! Less competition! We're still supposed to have one from each go to Union Station. Should it really be their fault if nobody else in the firm entered something in their category??
And, it's just even more unfair that only 1 of those top three would go to Union Station (because suddenly people could vote for 3 photos & nothing else if they wanted to), rather than one from each category like how it was supposed to be. And in even further unfairness, each of those 3 votes were weighted, rather than just being 3 plain votes. The 1st vote counted more than the 3rd. Thus, when the winning person received 20 votes for #1, and I received 16 votes for #2, it wasn't that I received 4 less votes. I'm actually not sure how far behind I was in #1 votes. who knows? But I was the one who had the most #2 votes. If this makes any sense. I still had most votes overall with 43. 43 people wrote down my number, #11, on one of those 3 lines on their ballots. I was still 9 ahead in overall votes. 43 people still liked my work well enough to put the number down. Versus only 34 people overall voting for the "#1" winner at some point on their ballots. The weight of the votes is screwy. If it had just been done by category everything would be fine & fair. And, the #1 winner was still a photograph. Someone said to me (though still thinking the whole thing stinks), well, if it was by category then it doesn't mean that you would have won in that category still. But, that's not the point. At least it would have been fair for everyone & I would have been okay with that. I wouldn't have gone through half the day thinking & believing I'd won! My feelings wouldn't have been hurt. I'm a big girl. I didn't even expect to win to begin with! I wouldn't have been a "sore loser" if it had been done right from the beginning & I'd lost still. So, that's not the point at all. I feel bad for the person who did the mosaic plate. They would have, and should have, gone to Union Station because they were the favorite in the 3D category. They won more votes than any of the other entrants in that category, and originally, got 3rd place even out of votes overall. It's just not fair for anyone else either & I feel equally as bad for them.
But, even thought it's a big deal for us artists, it's not a big enough deal for the rest of the firm to do anything about it & make it right or stick with the original vote count, so we just have to let it go. And I'll just try to get in a real gallery on my own. Where things are admitted based on their artistic value or because the artist is talented, not by office politics and Human Resources sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, deciding for everyone what our mental capacity for voting is. The Art @ Work really was a great concept, but unfortunately our firm is incapable of pulling something like this off without making it more complex than it should be. They turned a really fun thing into a big mess.
posted by Studio P Photography at 10:11 AM
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