Stupid Work Sh*t

ok - so being a screenwriter for a living is horrible, right? We've all heard the crazy notes, the insane suggestions, the re-writes, replacements. Oh My God. How can anybody do it?

It's a job. That's why. It's a job that some folks (well a lot of folks really) love. And when you love a job, you'll be willing to put up with some major bullshit.

Take, for instance, the bullshit I have to put up with just because I need a job.

We have 9 employees on my team. They are all working full time, 40-40+ hours/week. Three of them quit. Now we have 6 people trying to do the work of 9. We finally get 2 new people hired, but not the third.

What we get, instead, is - "our management has seen that some of us are working 40 hours a week and some 50-60 hours a week. We've been told that we need to even it out."

Say what? When we were 6 people, we were all working 60 hour weeks, when we were 7, fewer, 8 even fewer. Give us that other position that was working 40 hours/week and, Presto! We're not working 60 hour weeks anymore.

No.

That's not an option.

WTF? How do you lose a position that's necessary, get bitched about for working extra hours (that by the way are NOT overtime, just plain screwing the employee) and then refuse to hire the position that's needed?

By the way, this is all "because we care about those individuals putting in so many hours." Yeah, that makes sense. It's much better to put all of us at 50-55 hours a week than to just let a couple people suffer. And I must insert here:

1) We all go through times like this on our team
2) The one person is doing 2 jobs (remember the last position that needs to be hired)

So it's not just being mean saying they should suffer - it's just, if we all work 50 hours, the "problem" is solved and now we've found a way to evenly distribute the workload so we can take on more work. Huh?

How about paying them extra? Perhaps then it wouldn't be so bad. Oh, that's right. No money in the budget for salary. Only executive perks.

Bastards.