Time for another Friday post about my career in television (thus far).
When I started at Playboy, we were about 25-ish minutes from downtown (by bus). The assistant editors and me (the media manager) were put in our own special awesome (dark) room. Life was so good!
Not terribly long into my time there, we moved to Burbank(!). Dun dun dun [*scary chords*] The commute got so long. And we moved to being among everybody. We’d hear casting people on the phone all day on one side of us. We’d hear moans and groans from the editors on another. (They didn’t get their own bays. They had cubicles.) In fact, everybody (as far as I know) who used to have bays of some sort got cubicles instead in the new arrangement.
I don’t really know who did the layout, but people didn’t seem to super love it.
Still grateful for my job and still wanted to be good at it, but I could feel myself slipping. I know I should be able to deal with any working conditions. But I’d been so spoiled. Once we moved to this super far place with cubicles out in this overly-sunny area, I was just struggling.
I felt like I was always snacking at my desk (which made me feel kind of slobbish a little). Also, I wasn’t doing my body any favors having so much sugar all the time. (And I kind of think that led to me being even more tired.)
So, everything was fine. I was doing fine. Not a star, but my job was getting done. I felt bad about just being fine and doing fine, but figured as long as the job got done everything would be fine – which it completely was.
But in December, big honchos came in and there was a huge round of layoffs. I think about half the people I knew got laid off – including some superstars and some people who’d been there for a very long time.
My boss was shocked at how well I took the news. We laughed about it even. I enjoyed it Playboy, but I was ready for another hiatus – which is exactly what I got.
I was off from the end of December to sometime in March, when I got a call from my old boss from 2011, whom I’d worked for as a transcriber. (It was my through-line job when the other jobs weren’t going super great.)
He asked if I wanted to come be a night transcriber again.
I was getting kind of nervous because I’d been an AE (a year ago!). Then I went to media manager, which I thought was a step down. Now I’m gonna go back to being a transcriber? Oh no! Am I not as awesome as I once thought? Am I nosediving my career here? I hope not.
And this is where we’ll pick up next time.