My ACD art partner is more designer than art director, so concepting is literal hell. Anytime I have an idea, if I can't tell them exactly where every element is and how it should look, they cut it...

Talk to your boss and see what can be done. If nothing can be done, then leave.

Same here. Partner is literally a mouse chauffeur.

Ad school–trained ACD/Art here. NYC. Hire me as your freelance partner to fix your current partner’s mess.

I feel this way about my copywriter. I feel like I’m always having to show them what I was hoping for with the copy so much that I basically write it myself.

I had a writer partner like that. At the time I said “fuck it” if he won’t pitch in, I’ll just do the writing myself, but I wanted my boss to know that the ideas were mine, so I started just skipping my partner and going straight to my CD with ideas and scripts. My CD noticed soon enough that we weren’t working together and I mentioned that my partner just wasn’t pulling his own weight. He got mad AT ME, and said I needed to make things work with him and that it was my responsibility. To this day, I don’t agree, but I do see his point. Usually a busy CD doesn’t want you to come to him/her with problems. They want you to come to them with solutions.

CDs can’t do shit when it comes to partner issues, go to a GCD, ECD, or CCO, that’s the issues they deal with. I had a partner who would focus on their one idea they had, write one script for days. Luckily everyone else saw what I was dealing with. Soon after they left. And high-fives were had.