I'm not entirely sure if this is the right subreddit to post this in, but here we go.
tldr; Boss wants me to plagiarize articles and logos. I've told him it's illegal, but he doesn't care. I can't quit and I've been looking for a new job for almost a year now with no luck. I don't know what to do.
Some quick back story: A few years ago, I started working at an accounting firm under the impression that I would only be handling marketing and advertising.
Unfortunately, that never quite panned out. Because it's a small company (3 employees), I essentially handle anything thrown at me. I do taxes, balancing accounts in quickbooks, building and managing a websites, IT work, graphic design, photography, sales, admin work, settling estates, sell his shit on ebay, etc. Seriously, everything.
What makes the entire situation worse is whenever I'm assigned any sort of marketing/advertising work, very few ideas of mine ever get the green light. He mostly opts for reusing old tactics/lazy approaches. Additionally, the work that I do for him is mangled into this absolutely shitty mess because he doesn't understand anything about the field. You can even send him articles and he'll say they're wrong.
So a while ago, I was assigned to create a website for him. In its current state, it contained nothing but his newspaper advertisement (which was just a picture of him, the company name, and his phone number). There was no guidance given on how he wanted it to look. He instructed me to "go wild with it and we'll just use whatever you come up with as a starting point for multiple revisions."
When I presented him with a mockup, he rejected it on the basis that the stock photography would cost him a fortune ($150), it has too much text all over the place, etc.
He insisted that we should have a site that just states the services offered and two paragraphs about him. Oh, and it had to be spread out to as many pages as possible because people love to click things (according to him).
So, after many multiple revisions rejected, he heard about wordpress. "Let's just use some generic template. Nothing fancy, don't over complicate this more than it needs to. I also need you to create a logo. Go wild with it and we'll just use whatever you come up with as a starting point for multiple revisions. " Deja vu.
I pleaded with him that I need to know what he wants in the logo, but he stayed firm in the statement of doing whatever.
Came back with the a logo, rejected. No commentary given. New logo, rejected. Rinse and repeat.
Finally, he said he likes the logo of a movie and that he would like me to use that. I told him that I could make it similar, but certainly not exact as that would be plagiarism. "No. Actually, I want to use this. Just take this image and put it on our ads and website."
I refused.
Frustrated, he said "FINE. JUST MAKE THE LOGO TEXT AND DON'T OVERTHINK THE FONT. JUST USE ARIAL OR TIMES NEW ROMAN." He stormed off. I won this battle for not plagiarizing. (On my off time, I created a similar logo which contained the elements that he liked of the movie logo. He proceeded to get all pissy saying he didn't understand why I couldn't just copy the original exactly)
Months go by and he realizes the website is pretty barebones. "Can you just find articles from where ever online and copy and paste them on the website?" I dismissed the idea, but explained that I could write a few articles for him. "No, don't do that. Just copy them. Do as I said".
Again, I refuse. So, I create a few articles on my off time in an effort to get him off my back. When I gave them to him, he said "Yeah, but now I have to edit these. So, they're no good. Just copy and paste an article from a competitor's website."
So now, I'm in a predicament. It's been a few weeks since his request to plagiarize articles and he keeps reminding me that I need to do this. Every concern that I've brought up has been met with anger by him and a reminder that I'm being disobedient.
I've been searching for a new job for about a year now with absolutely no luck. I can't quit. I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. The day is going to come where he'll force me to do it and I don't know what I can do about it.
What should I do?
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100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter)
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