On Tuesday, my employment with Diamond Comic Distributors came to an end.<\/p>\n
After the sale of the company\u2019s assets<\/a> to Universal and Ad Populum closed in May, those of us at Diamond who were not let go were employed by Diamond under a Transition Services Agreement (TSA) through June 30th. It was unclear whether our employment would extend beyond June 30th \u2013 Fran, the director of Human Resources sent a clarifying email that our continuing employment under the TSA should not be construed as an offer of employment from Ad Populum \u2013 and some of my colleagues were more optimistic than I. Working on the order forms in early June, I became a bit emotional at the thought that these would be the last, and I wasn\u2019t anxious to let them go.<\/p>\n Still, signs developed as the calendar turned over closer and closer to June 30th that there was a future beyond July \u2013 questions were asked about September\u2019s catalog, more questions were asked about processes that wouldn\u2019t have made sense were Diamond shutting down at the end of June. And on Thursday, June 26th, Ad Populum extended offers of employment.<\/p>\n The offers did not come all at once, and on my team, half of us, myself included, had received them before our weekly Teams meeting, which made for an uncomfortable state of uncertainty for the rest of the team. As the emails trickled out, the reactions in the meeting was a bit like finding one of Willy Wonka\u2019s Golden Tickets, albeit a Golden Ticket that, at least in the short term, offered a bit of stability after the chaos and uncertainty of the previous five months.<\/p>\n So it was that on July 1st, my employment with Ad Populum began, opening a new chapter in my storied career in the comics industry.<\/p>\n The first week \u2013 well, three days, given that Monday, the 30th, was my last day with Diamond, and that Friday, the 4th, was a holiday \u2013 was unremarkable. Some onboarding \u2013 fill out some paperwork, enroll in a benefits package, learn how to use the payroll system \u2013 and after that, everything remained exactly the same.<\/p>\n At some point, I hope to hear from Ad Populum \u2013 leadership, marketing, whomever \u2013 about their expectations. As yet, that hasn\u2019t happened. But it will, probably sooner at this point.<\/p>\n For the moment, I am carrying on with the August Diamond PREVIEWS<\/b><\/i>. It\u2019s much reduced from previous months, and it\u2019s currently a digital-only PDF. The format is different, but it\u2019s the same catalog I\u2019ve been working on week in, week out since 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Tuesday, my employment with Diamond Comic Distributors came to an end. After the sale of the company\u2019s assets to Universal and Ad Populum closed in May, those of us at Diamond who were not let go were employed by Diamond under a Transition Services Agreement (TSA) through June 30th. It was unclear whether ourContinue reading “The First Week”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[5238,4846],"class_list":["post-34530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work","tag-ad-populum","tag-diamond-comic-distributors","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}