Hello everyone, I hope you are having a good day. Sorry for the long post, but I'm stuck and don't know what to do.
I work as a designer and I'm very privileged to work from home. Me and my partner were able to start saving up rather than live paycheck to paycheck, and we both work.
I earn just enough to bring money so that we can barely stay afloat. Without this small contribution, we will go in negative. But this is just for context.
So, I am outsourced by a social media managing company that works with cryptobros. This job was given to me by my private client, who is now my “manager”. My job is a social media content designer. I enjoyed my job at first, I tried my best to make new ideas and better execution, even though I didn't believe in the cause.
My, or better to say “my manager's” clients liked what I did, and I liked to be useful and innovative. However, quickly it became a very different job.
I started to have calls with my manager where he wasted my time asking to click a few pixels right and left over and over. My decisions were constantly challenged and dismissed, he started asking to make decisions about the designs that I didn't agree with. Moreover, what pisses me the most, every time he asks to send him a file of my work, so he can make changes in it.
The longer I worked for him, the more my job turned into “add this to the file, no actually remove, no actually I changed my mind, bring it back”. And still I send this manipuleted by him through me file to be changed again. I don't know if he is so persistent on making changes to MY work, why he doesn't do it himself.
Because of his stupid decisions as he is not a designer my work turns into shit. And on rare occasions when I'm happy about what I did, I go to social media of my clients and see my work butchered.
I feel like I have no agency as a professional. He makes me bring designs for client to choose that were carefully ruined by my manager. Moreover, as I work with them I question even morality of working for people who believe in a financial bubble.
When I do my job, I feel my life being burned for clownery. My decisions being dismissed by a fool who can't see his lack of understanding of the job he tries to influence. He calls me in the middle of the day without prior notice and I ignore it which makes him irritated. He asks me to overturn the outcome of Twitter compression by demanding unachievable standarts for pictures that will be compressed on random in the process of posting.
And best of all, I'm not paid hourly, I paid the same by picture, no matter how long he demands the most stupid changes.
I'm stuck in this situation because I'm broke. I want to leave, but I will put a lot of stress on my partner to work more to fill the gap. I'm working on a side portfolio for UI/UX to try to find a new job, but I don't know how to not become absolutely miserable while I seek for it and forced to work at my current bullshit job. I don't know if I'm just whining or if there is a way I can politely say to my manager to stop trying to do my job, but I fucking hate every second I spend on this. I realize I'm luckier than many, but I'm still miserable contributing nothing for nothing.