It drains any creative energy you may have had and puts it aside in the name of quantity. Oh sure, you may think I'm making a fuss out of what's been happening to me recently, but this whole thing is really frustrating the fuck out of me. You're not allowed any sort of creativity in commercial web design. Maybe in some projects, you are, like if you're working with a fixed medium like print or television, but the Web is an entirely different animal. In commercial design, every single fucking thing you design has to have a point.
Nothing can be there just for effect.
It has to make money somehow. You can't fade letters or stick in images that only have a tangential relationship to the main idea. If something doesn't seem perfect, another solution has to be found. This profession is not for anyone who requires artistic excellence. I've been dragged through the dirt doing terrible banners and making tiny, insignificant adjustments to images, and all this takes hours.