Michael Ruocco's Overworked Wabbit Sickness: "Porky's Duck-Livery Service"

 Original link: https://twitter.com/aguywhodraws/status/967899600488038400

"WHO WANTS TO HEAR A CRAZY STORY AND MAYBE LEARN A LESSON?! It's a long one, so bear with me... 

On Season 1 of Wabbit (Now "New Looney Tunes"), I was still a very green storyboarder, and I wanted to prove my worth, so I put in a lot of extra effort and time to make my shows better. I'd work extra hours (unpaid), stay late and practically animate shots so there was enough information for the overseas animators to work off of. I'd even try to clean up my boards so that I wasn't dropping a ton of work on the already-swamped board clean-up people. 

After a year, I was exhausted. I was spending most of my time in the studio so I wasn't eating or sleeping well, and my immune system was in really bad shape. I got sick a lot more, but I worked through it because I knew the work needed to be done. And on top of that, I didn't tell anyone how I was feeling. My director, my co-workers, my roommates, not even my girlfriend at the time. I wanted to prove that I was a hard, diligent worker, so I powered through. At one point I got a very high fever, collapsed in the parking lot and had a bit of a breakdown in my car. I couldn't drive so my friend drove me home. The next morning, not wanting to bother anybody, I walked 2 miles to the studio to pick up my car, and ended up staying a few extra hours to work on my board. Whether it was delirium, stubbornness or stupidity (looking back it was definitely all three), I did it. 

At the end of the season, we had no idea if we were gonna get a season 2 pickup, so after a whole year of making solely Bugs Bunny shorts, for the last episode they wanted to do one with Daffy, and they assigned it to me. Daffy's my favorite Looney Tunes character, and we were gonna make him the classic screwball Daffy that I loved most, so despite being so tired and the fact that I was told I had a bit of a shorter schedule than usual (3 weeks instead of 4), I was excited to take it on. Still semi-recovering from my fever, I started working on the board. But soon after, I caught a virus called "herpangina", which is a lot like hand, foot and mouth disease. The most prominent symptom of it is that your mouth and throat is completely covered in blisters. Imagine that every surface of your mouth outside of your teeth is covered in canker sores. Tongue, underside of tongue, cheek, gums, uvula, throat...everywhere. It was painful to swallow, drinking anything that wasn't lukewarm was excruciating, and eating ANYTHING was next to impossible. So on top of recovering from a fever, I wasn't eating or drinking for days. After 4 days I could finally eat Jell-O because it was soft and slimey enough to pass through my mouth and throat without irritation, but there's still little to no nutritional value in Jell-O. I was as close to a zombie one can be without being dead, but the board needed to be done... so for the days leading up to my 2-week rough pitch, I was trudging way, stopping every few minutes to spit blood into my garbage can. 

The day of the pitch arrives, and at this point my directors know about my mouth sores and they offered to pitch the cartoon in my place, but I was too stubborn and proud to let them. If this was possibly gonna be my last time live pitching a cartoon, I wanted to do it no matter what. So right before the pitch, I rinsed my mouth with a numbing mouthwash, went into the board room and began the pitch. Two minutes in, the mouthwash wore off and the pain was back. Doing Daffy's lisp and Porky's stutter with a mouth full of sores is no picnic. But the pitch went well. Immediately after getting notes, I ran to the bathroom and vomited blood. I was done. 

I went to the doctor and he said I was in pretty bad shape. He advised me that even though my last day was only a few weeks away, I should put in a notice to leave now and take a few months off to recover. And on top of that, remove any other outside stresses from my life, including moving out of my current apartment to get a place of my own, changing my diet and to not exert myself as much as possible. I was conflicted, but he was right, and I did all those things. My board was half-done, but thankfully my friend David "Pez" Hofmann went over my rough board and made that cartoon just shine. The short is called "Porky's Duck-livery Service", and it's probably available to watch online somewhere if you're curious enough to look for it. Apparently it was so well-received that when the show WAS approved for another season, they wanted to do a lot more Daffy/Porky shorts, and open things up for other classic characters too. I was out of work for almost 5 months, but eventually I was back to normal and jumped back to the fray again, getting hired back onto Season 2 the following year. Since then, in regards to work, I've learned how to pick my battles. I don't try to over-accomplish, I just work within my means. I've learned to let things go, and to trust that the people around me, the people I work alongside every day, will do an amazing job taking on my work after I'm done with it. And I make sure to enjoy my time AWAY from the studio, to find a nice balance between work and leisure to keep me happy and healthy. 

I learned a lot from that experience, the hard way. Working myself to that degree was not only harmful to my health, but it affected a lot more in my life. By not communicating to the ones I was closest to or seeking help, trust was frayed, if not totally broken with some. I missed out on a lot of things I really wanted to do, and it actually made my job, which was something I loved, not enjoyable anymore. Overworking myself did nearly irreversible damage to my body, and changed my entire outlook on life, as well as people's perceptions of me. I was stupid, but very, very lucky. 

The big lesson I learned was that, even though your intentions might be good, overworking yourself is the worst thing you could possibly do, because in the end, you wear yourself down to the point where, among other things, you're not doing the best work you could be doing, so you end up where you didn't want to end up in the first place. People need breaks, and time to rest, and your co-workers and employers understand that too. And you should not make your job the most prominent thing in your life. You only live once. Appreciate life, and enjoy it, because you may not get another chance at it."

Anonymous Animation Production Staff Story #3 - Animation Production Union NOW

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

 "I've had my fair share of run of the mill work place harassment and sexual harassment, which I feel a fair amount of could've been remedied with union protection and standards. Over the years, PA's and PC's I've known have been turned and burned much like our live action counterparts.

In my case, it's a little different since I'm a mixed POC trans person. Being trans in any industry is *hard*, and animation is no different. But being in an industry that tries to pride itself on progressiveness when in reality its just a lot of NIMBY bullshit is exhausting. 

I'd say my worst experience was at -------, a studio notorious for squashing unions and worker rights. I had just come off of a different job being physically and verbally abused by an alcoholic boss, so I was *very* careful to be closeted at ------ because I was paranoid.

Regardless of this, my associate producer and producer figured out that I was trans and proceeded to talk about me to other people on the crew and make fun of me, create impossible tasks for me, and ignore any complaints I had. Once a crewmember stood over me as I was sitting at my desk and screamed at me for 10 minutes over an email memo I had distributed telling everyone to remember to put their design on model sheets/paste ups--the producers did nothing and eventually the art director took this person on a walk so he would stop.

It came to a head when these producers, both white women, were laughing during a design/SB breakdown meeting and one of them had to step out due to a pet emergency. She shoved her laptop at me and told me to use it to take notes. It was open on her Gmail on a chat window to the other producer in the room, they had been laughing and gossiping about my face and how "stupid" and "ugly" it looked. I was in such shock...she knew what she was handing me and had wanted me to see. I went in the bathroom and cried after work and on the way home.

I confronted one of them during a "check-in", gently. Saying "T know what you said about my appearance". I was met with great hostility, being told I was going to be fired if I said anything and that I needed to "get my shit together" because I once did not include a cover sheet on a pile of storyboard panels.

To that point and my entirety of employment there, I worked OT and was never paid; was the only person who had "talkings to", the other coordinator never had meetings like I did; had crew members insult me/yell at me. With no upper management support.

I was let go with no provocation, no incident. And HR told me "well they told you that we had talked previously, didn't they?" I informed the woman talking to me, that in fact no. No one had told me it had gone to HR. That they simply told me to work harder (because of that coversheet on a packet) and that I'd been "doing well" (given all that unpaid OT). I informed HR about the harassment I'd endured and that I was convinced that they were letting me go because I was trans, and that they certainly didn't hold the cis woman who was my coworker to the same standards--and the response was "oh. well maybe we should check both sides of the story...in the future. they say it's because you're not a good fit."

I had to sit next to the woman who had called me ugly, and get asked "is there anything you want to say to her?" Of course said no. And HR told me "if you could not tell people about this... and maybe try coming back here to work another time??"

I was gobsmacked. And of course, I was escorted by security. Me. 5'4, 100ish pounds. As if I was going to do something over this awful job. My one friend on the crew and my faithful PA helped me pack my desk. In the meantime, the producers had taken the rest of the crew to a nearby bar to celebrate the fact that I had been let go/fired.

Sorry this was long. There were even more details around this hell hole, but I'm sure I rambled long enough. This was ONE job back in 2016.

Oh jesus. How could I forget. I ran into my PA at a --- function after all was said and done, and she told me that to twist the knife further, they refused to pay her OT as well and tried giving her AMAZON giftcards instead."

Anonymous Animation Production Staff Story #2 - Animation Production Union NOW

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

"I work on a big show and make less than I did at a smaller studio.

  I also work free OT all the time. Not because the studio insists, but because my coworkers do. They do so much of their work on free OT that the only way | can keep up is to do it too. They work hours before the day starts and hours after. I've talked to them multiple times about how harmful it is, but they just keep telling me that's how they work best. The one time I asked for OT from the studio, I got in trouble for not finishing my work in a "reasonable" amount of time. No, I just can't keep up with people who work after and before the shift."

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."