Picking up from yesterday –
So, I’d worked my way around different cities, ending up in Vegas.
Now that they were paying my way, I started to really feel like I was kind of making it.
As I was trying to remember the differences between the seasons, Vegas 2009 and 2010 sort of ran together. But I think I have a handle on which is which.
This season (4 (2009)), I remember going back and forth to the airport a lot – helping corral the contestants onto big tour buses (like they needed me as their chaperone, or something), and bringing them from the travel person station at the airport to the travel person stationed at the hotel.
I did get to wait for groups inside the airport by a Starbucks. So, that was convenient.
I also walked contestants around to their various rehearsals and fittings and things. This was kind of fun to get to roam around the hotel and talk to different people throughout the day. However, this was also stressful because our walkie talkies didn’t work in parts of the hotel. So, there always seemed to be a lot of running and desperately trying to find various people.
Somehow we made it through.
(Side note on Vegas: One thing I will always remember is the heartbreak I felt for the talented sweetheart Kelli Glover.)
So, Vegas came and went.
And I put it out there that I’d like to work in Los Angeles for the summer shows.
Now, I didn’t fight extremely hard to do that. I knew it’d be a pain in the bum to find a place in LA for the summer. And it’d mean coming back to school a bit late into the semester. But, at this point, I’d worked so hard already, I wanted to keep my TV career going.
Somehow, after all those cities, I still hadn’t learned that the “right” channels are not the right ones.
I thought you’d just go to the person who does the hiring of the people at your level (which was at the time, I think the production coordinator (sometimes it’s the APOC (assistant production office coordinator) or production manager, kind of depends on the show).
But, here’s the thing. The right person is the person who wants to hire you and has the power to.
What does the production coordinator care if you’re working in the summer or not? That person has his/her own friends to potentially get on the show.
I had never thought of this before, because usually at the end of the city, my ally (whom I didn’t know was such a strong, necessary ally), would ask if I was coming to the next city. I said I’d love to. Poof. She’d make it happen.
So, when I was working with a different department, I just figured I’d go to the production coordinator (who’d officially been hiring me all these times anyway – all emails and things came from her, so why wouldn’t I go through her?).
I did not get hired for the summer.
For the record, I’m not painting the production coordinator as a villain or as someone out to get me. She wasn’t. It was just a first-hand lesson.
As we know from all advice people give ever – generally, the only person looking out for you is you. So, when you find someone else willing to be your comrade, use that. Don’t assume that other people on the show are going to help you out.
It might feel silly or entitled to get someone above the hiring person, or in a different department, to be the one who hires you on the show. But you gotta do what you gotta do, right? And I learned that that was what I had to do.
(By the way, in the end it was better that I did not work for AGT in the summer, ’cause that was when I learned about my heart problem. It would’ve been a really horrible time had by all, I’m sure.)
I shall continue this story soon enough.