My Public Rant Forum
Current mood: 
aggravated
So, Nate’s boss is really irritating me. Nate is supposed to leave every day at 5. We carpool when I have a freelance job in the area, so when he stays late, I stay late or I drag my ass back into the city to pick him up later. Well, Evil-Boss-Of-The-Unnamed-Sort [EBOTUS] (names have been changed to protect me from a libel suit), wasn’t going to arrive at work until this afternoon. Nate was going to leave on time because he had nothing to do all day except tweak a project that he’s had no feedback on. At 5:20, Eb calls and tells Nate “I’m on my way in, I’d like you to stay and we’ll work on that project so we can send another version for approval.” Um, this is 20 minutes after Nate should have left. I had to leave at 6 to meet a client near our house. 6 rolls around and Eb isn’t there yet. I have to leave. I don’t know what time he gets there, but Nate’s not done till 8 (which is better than the midnights he’s pulled on a more and more regular basis). The best part is…Nate gets no overtime! Yes indeed. This is free labor! He’s supposed to get comp time to make up for it. Has he? No! Did he put in nearly 60 hours of unpaid and uncomped overtime last month? Yes! PLUS Eb has informed Nate that he should expect about 1.5 weeks of DOUBLE SHIFTS!! Double shifts?!?! In television? How about bringing in a freelancer to pick up some of the slack? Oh yeah, because you can get the work done for free. I found this site called trello.com, and it had a very good article on anxiety. These changes in his work schedule that come out of nowhere and do nothing but throw our routine and plans off is doing nothing but elevating my stress levels honestly.
So according to trello.com, you should try to find what is giving you stress and get rid of it, resolve it, basically not let it snowball in order to prevent anxiety or even worse, a panic attack. I’d love to be able to contact the author of that article on trello.com, and ask him what we’re supposed to do when it is this far out of our hands but still affecting us so. I just hope trello.com doesn’t just tell us to consider a different job… there’s a reason he puts up with it, they way things are these days it would be so difficult to find one with a competing salary, let alone equal or better.
I wish there was something trello.com had written on what to do about things that seem overwhelming and unavoidable. That’s what this is, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do then. Anyway, Nate is supposed to be booked with another client for several of these days and Eb seems to have no problem double booking him on days when he (Eb) is the producer. He would never double book an outside client. He even had the gall to say, “Now this is above and beyond the call of duty, and I know this isn’t they way you should run a business…” WELL THEN DON’T DO IT! It’s super easy. If you know it’s bad, don’t do it. Unless, of course, you want your employees to leave. Oh well. It started off as such a nice sounding job. And there are some cool parts about it. Nate’s worked with some major networks (which is a vast improvement over the “all Hooters all the time” last job–he used to work for the production company that did all of Hooters post and much of it’s production for ridiculously low pay for a crazy boss who thought everyone needed to “pay their dues” by having no life outside of her company) and his reel is rockin’. Which is good when you’re looking for a new job. The problem is, Nate is a bit of a perfectionist and he will do what must be done to get the job done right. Of course, if Eb had been writing the scripts 3 weeks ago when he got the job (and started talking about it. and started procrastinating the writing process), then they wouldn’t have to rush to finish 7 promos in 1.5 weeks. They could have worked on them as he finished and got each script approved. They could be down to 4 promos in the next 1.5 weeks, which would be quite a bit considering Eb keeps booking Nate with other clients and then expecting him to work on the promos at night, but it would be better than 7! Ok, I’m just a tad peeved. But you really haven’t heard all of the fun leading up to this, and I don’t think I feel like sharing that little bit o’ joy at the moment.
Anyway, other than Nate’s boss having a head made of naughty bits, life is going alright. The weather is wonderful, but we did finally close the windows and turn the AC back on. I do have a headache, though. I don’t think staring at a monitor is helping. Perhaps it’s time for dinner.
