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, 1 reply)

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)