Not going to name names or places,
but one of my previous jobs, working in a TV and film environment, was the worst job I've ever had and run by the worst people I've ever met. Twats, the lot of them.

A few excerpts -

After signing my contract I discovered that part of it actually claimed that by signing the document I was waiving European employment rights (always read the fine print. Lesson learned there...). This allowed them to put me on 2 weeks of 15 hour night shifts, with a 30 minute break. I would start work at 6, and get home at 9am the next morning. I didn't see daylight for two weeks straight on the run up to christmas that year. I'm not exaggerating when I say by the end of that fortnight I felt like I was about to die.

The kitchen in which we used to congregate over the course of the day (this was our base essentially, and any jobs we were given were sent there), was not equipped with any means to sit down. We were informed by a senior staff member that if anyone sat down, they would be fired. I thought this was a joke at first, until I was told that the boss used to place one chair in the kitchen when new people were hired. If that person sat on it they were immediately dismissed. So for the nine months I worked there, every single day was sent stood up, with a 30 minute break to eat dinner. That doesn't sound all that bad, but try it. On top of that, both of my knees and ankles are already rigorously fucked from a condition I had as a teenager which made my muscles mature faster than my bones. Every single day I would come home and be in agony, needing to soak my feet in cold water to reduce the swelling around my ankles. I was told I could not have a chair to sit on during the day.

We were told anyone who picked a cup up by it's rim instead of the handle when serving cups of tea and coffee would be fired.

We threw away about £80 worth of fresh fruit and cakes every single day of the week if they weren't eaten that day. When I suggested we give them to a shelter or something I was told that the idea had been put forwards before, but the boss didn't like the idea of having homeless people hanging around outside the building waiting for free food. I have no idea how you come to this conclusion from "give it to a shelter". This was the thing that pissed me off the most. We were supposed to treat the people that came into the facility as though they were in a hotel as opposed to at work, and the sheer volume of food that got thrown away every single day made me want to be sick. I have never seen anyone so wasteful. If "important people" were coming in, they would spend £150 on a buffet spread in a heartbeat, which 9 times out of 10 didn't get touched. It then went in the skip at the back of the building.

Aside from these and the numerous other incidents that made those 9 months like a living hell, we got treated like children all day every day. It was like being back at school and trying to avoid the strict teacher that would give you detention for being late if he caught you in the corridor when the bell rang. I was 22 at this point.

After nine months working there, and being miserable for every single day, I was told my contract was not being renewed. To this day I cannot recall a time when I have felt happier than that moment.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 13 Apr 2012, 22:46, 15 replies)

Christ
and I thought I had issues at work. That places makes our rubbish management seem like Jesus.
( Bats, Sat 14 Apr 2012, 6:27, closed)

why not just quit and go be a teaboy somewhere else?

( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 10:09, closed)

Read the last two sentences.
And I wasn't a teaboy. I was a runner. Which is a teaboy that can digitise video.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 11:04, closed)

after 9 months,
Grow a backbone and learn to stand up for yourself or you will forever be a teaboy.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Sun 15 Apr 2012, 9:28, closed)

Thanks for the motivational speech.
If you actually read what I wrote the first time, I no longer do that job. Nor am I now, or ever have been, a teaboy. My reply to you the first time was meant in a jokey manner. Clearly you misunderstood.

I was a technical runner. My main job was the day to day running of the facility, which involved making sure edit suites were online, delivering playouts of sequences all over the city and digitising footage to be used in edits. When we weren't busy doing that, people would ask us to sort out food and drink for clients, as we were the only ones that could really leave the building to go and buy such things.

Working as a runner is the first job anyone will get in the industry I work in. Almost every single TV show and film you have watched has been made by someone who was, at one point, a runner. It has been the way into my industry for the last 60 years or so. My sticking to the job has nothing to do with growing a backbone, and everything to do with the fact that leaving after a week would pretty much ensure I never got a job anywhere else. After nine months, I decided that was a reasonable period of time for me to quit and not have it reflect badly on me. As I stated elsewhere, the day I was told I was being let go, was the day I was going to tell my manager I wasn't coming back in.

There is a certain amount of having to "pay your dues" involved before anyone will give you a better job. If you can put up with the shit jobs for a while, eventually you will get bumped up the ladder. It just so happened that the company I worked for had no intention of bumping anyone up the ladder, but were happy to basically lie to us based on our understanding of the way the rest of the industry works. I know many people who also started as runners, and now work as associate producers or line managers.

Therefore, it is with the utmost respect that I inform you that you are talking out of your bottom.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sun 15 Apr 2012, 10:32, closed)

Apparently young folk with degrees are routinely expected to be workplace skivvies. Sometimes even without getting paid for it.
How the other half live.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sun 15 Apr 2012, 19:21, closed)

I worked for free for a year
before I could get paid work. Again, it comes down to the desperation people have to get into this industry. You have to do whatever you can to get more experience and contacts than the next guy.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sun 15 Apr 2012, 23:23, closed)

What if you want to break into the industry but don't have the necessary financial/familial support to get by with an unpaid full-time job?

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Mon 16 Apr 2012, 23:48, closed)

Then you have to work in your spare time.
That's what I did. I pretty much worked 7 days a week for about a year, between studying, working weekends and evenings and doing as much "freelance" work as I could in my spare time. I still do that now in fact. My hours are a little bit more forgiving these days, but I still work my fucking arse off to try and get to where I want to be. I currently work weekends doing technical support, three days/nights a week teaching, and on my days off I do any freelance jobs I might have on, which is usually about 40 hours of work a month.

If I'm totally honest with you, it's had a pretty adverse effect on my health, social life and home life. I make time for people when I can, but that's not as often as I like. I'm pretty ruled by my work at the moment, but I'm hoping I'm going to be in the position I want to be in within the next year. I'm a hell of a lot better off than where I was 12 months ago, so I'm hoping that pattern will continue. It's tough, but I simply refuse to do a job where I have to put a tie on and turn up to work and sell fucking insurance or something.

The other thing is, I fucking love the work I do. I make music videos and short films and write scripts and teach, and get paid for it all. My time is worth something now because I'm actually very good at what I do. And that's because I spent a long time gaining experience and practising the skills I need to make a living.

I also just found out tonight that a short film I did visual effects on has been accepted into Cannes. These are the sorts of things that keep me doing what I do.
( PMGT -Bacon., Tue 17 Apr 2012, 2:54, closed)

I read the the excerpts and have some points:
1) I am pretty sure that you can't sign away statutory rights within a contract no matter how much employers or, for that matter, employees wish to (I am happy to be corrected on this point by any employment lawyers but am fairly confident in my assertion);
2) Being sacked for using a chair, unfair dismissal any which way you choose to look at it (unless using it to beat your boss to a pulp of course);
3) Constructive dismissal not renewing your contract if the position remains after your departure (give or take certain requirements and job title shenanigans) even though it sounds like a blessed relief.
Should you ever be unlucky enough to find yourself in a similar situation seek legal advice or speak to Acas, also you could cunt them right in the fuck if you reported them for the Health and Safety violations you appear to describe. Might make you a less attractive employee to the next lot of course.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 15:42, closed)

Thanks for the advice,
I have been told that on point 1) before. And I'm sure you're right on the other points too. The reason my contract wasn't renewed was partly because they were cutting back in several areas, and partly because after nine months I was absolutely miserable and as a result completely shit at my job because I was finding it took all the effort in the world just to get out of bed in the morning and drag my sorry carcass into a place that I would have happily burnt down given the opportunity...

I think a big part of their attitude came from (and still comes from, it hasn't changed even five years later, and it was like that before I started too...) the fact that we were all relatively fresh-faced university graduates desperately trying to start a media career, and we were willing to put up with pretty much anything if we thought it would get us to where we wanted to be. That was certainly the circumstances under which I took the job. We were also told that we'd be trained on the job in order to move up into being editors. In nine months, I got one day of training. There were people doing that job who had been there for four years who hadn;t moved up in any way shape or form. And the best bit was we were told we would have to wait for the people "ahead of us in the queue" to move up before we did. Which meant I would have to wait for about 12 people to leave, and 12 people to move up before I would even be considered for anything resembling a promotion. They were expolitative cunts in almost every sense. As far as I am aware, none of the people who I worked with are there now as they all gradually came to the realisation that the job was a massive pile of horseshit and we were being treated as such.

And this is one of the most prominent film and TV companies in Manchester. They make a hell of a lot of stuff you have seen on television. Supposedly a forward thinking industry, and yet it's full of the same corrupt bastards as every other industry...
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 15:59, closed)

Are they called summat like 'grandad'?

( His Popiness the Hole Invaded Poland on, Sat 14 Apr 2012, 16:21, closed)

No...
Not that big. Not the BBC either, who are actually lovely to work for.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 16:51, closed)

Four years!!!
I've worked in some pretty shitty places, but if any of them had treated their employees like that they'd have been lucky to hold onto them for four hours, never mind four years.

Also, the end of the last sentence would be more accurate if it read "every other industry that recruits mugs who'll put up with absolutely anything in the vague hope it'll get them something better".
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 14 Apr 2012, 17:25, closed)

I think it might be a bit harsh
to call us mugs. a bit naive maybe, but not mugs. Personally, I had never worked in that industry before. Going into the job I was told by a lot of people who work in the TV industry that "perseverence is the key to working in this industry". That's probably true of most industries.

I had decided after my first week that the job was a big pile of shit and I hated it. But this is one of the biggest TV companies in Britain, I just assumed that this was the way it was everywhere.

Everything I had been told by everyone up to that point was along the lines of "it's tough at first, then you'll move up, but stick with it because they're a really big company". I had worked for the BBC before this job, so I took their advice as read.

Literally, the day I was told I wasn't being kept on I had made the decision that I was going to quit that afternoon. They beat me to the punch by about an hour.

I don't feel like I was a mug. I was fully aware of how shit it was, and how shit I was being treated. But I was also desperate to carve out a career in probably the most competitive and over-employed industry in Britain. The fact that I put up with it for so long only serves to illustrate how much I give a shit about doing what I do for a living. I now work as a freelance film-maker/editor and a part time lecturer at a college, where I'm now a fully credited Avid Certified Instructor. I now teach the people I was previously making cups of tea for.

I still earn fuck all money, and the hours are still pretty ridiculous sometimes, but no-one tells me what to do and I actually make a living by being creative now whereas then, I felt like I was sucking dick for money.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 14 Apr 2012, 17:59, closed)

May I suggest ...
... this or this?
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Tue 17 Apr 2012, 14:07, closed)