Anonymous Animation Production Staff Story #1 - Animation Production Union NOW

Text translation of an anonymous animation production staff story, received by AnimationProdUnionNow (@prod_animation)

 "At almost every gig I had when I was a PA I had producers & managers who were VERY against giving anybody on the production crew OT. Instead they’d tell us to just work late whenever they needed us to, told us to not report it on our time sheets but to leave early or come in an hour late the next few days depending on how much we worked after. They would always shoot me down if I even thought about OT. Considering I was only making $16/hr at the time I could’ve REALLY used that extra money. There have been nights on productions l've worked on, where I stayed in the office until 10pm sometimes even midnight on rare occasions to send a delivery or waiting for a freelancer to turn in their assignment and of course I couldn’t leave cause the schedule was so demanding and it needed to go out that night. One night I was terribly sick and I was so worried about falling behind with my work I came in at 4 in the morning before anybody else in the office so I wouldn't get them sick, scrunched all my work for the day in 2 hours and wrote a huge super detailed email explaining where everything was in the pipeline, apologizing profusely and that I'd be back the next day. I wasn't making much at the time and I didn't have a lot of sick days so I was extremely worried I wasn't gonna have enough to cover my sick days and make rent. I also didn't log those hours I was in the office in fear of my producer/manager seeing it on my time sheet and reprimanding me.

Also, after my first gig making $16/hr, I was able to find another PA job at a big film studio but I had to take a paycut to $14/hr cause they couldn't match even though we had a huge feature budget. Multiple times I'd be sent to buy the executives these extravagant expensive lunches. Some of them wouldn't even come into the office most days and they'd "work from home." But myself I ate alot of ramen that year since I had to save all my money for rent. Since working in production for the last 5 years I've had night terrors thinking I forgot to log a shot, publish an assignment, email a person, etc. At one point in my career I developed a drinking problem to deal with the stress. I would drink an insane amount at the studio parties cause the booze was free, even sneak alcohol home if I could."