I honestly just need to vent because the situation is really bumming me out and giving me a lot of anxiety.
I am a college professor but I do costume design freelance work on the side because college professors get paid really poorly in the states. Usually I pick up gigs as a costume designer for musical productions which is a lump sum (and the money still isn’t great there but I genuinely enjoy it) but this past summer I got a gig with a company that does entertainment at weddings and corporate events (this showgirls, champagne girls, dancers ect). I make a lot of costumes for them and it’s really fun since I love glitzy glamour costumes. And then I also go to events as a manager and basically make sure the performers have what they need and serve as the representative from our group at the venue. We have it in our contract that the venue needs to feed us so that’s a main part of the job since venues get really stingy about feeding vendors even though the guests usually pay for vendor meals.
I did this job while I was off from teaching over the summer and it was fun, but I was clear with the business owner that come the fall I wouldn’t really be availible, but I could work an event here or there if my schedule was free. Now another piece of important info is this summer was a huge period of expansion for the company, it really was just the main business owner and one assistant. I was the first costumer she brought on board and now she’s up to 7 employees. But everyone working for her is on either a part time employment schedule or a contract freelancer.
I started noticing probably around the end of the summer some concerning behaviors. We would go to an event and she would say “ok pretend like I’m not here” to make sure I could handle things on my own but then interrupt or correct me every 5 mins. I have pretty bad anxiety, so I started to get really anxious before events I knew she would be attending because it was going to be 10 hours of being corrected. I also have plenty of management experience so it’s frustrating that she doesn’t just let me manage.
One of the most recently upsetting incidents is one of the venues we work at serves us dinner but they have a rule no one is allowed to take food out of the building. Now I am on a medication that slows my stomach emptying and I really only eat 4-5 bites at a time so I bring tupperwear to pack my food so I can either pick at it since the events are long or take it home because it seems so wasteful to just toss it. She’s seen me do this and said it’s fine as long as I’m discreet. Well I guess the venue said something to her about seeing me pack up my food on camera and she sent me a really aggressive and angry text about it instead of just being like “hey, I know we did that before but let’s not do that from now on”.
And then another thing this week was she asked me if I could help out with an event next week she was short people. It goes until 3 in the morning so I told her I could help until 10 and then go home because it’s a work night. She was fine with that. But then she wanted to have a zoom planning meeting and I have a show opening this week (I am on rehearsal
every night 5-11) and I kept telling her I could do before 5 but not after because I’m working another job. She was getting really agitated because the other person working the event also works full time and can’t meet until after 5. But what does she want us to do? Our full time jobs come first.
I think she is going through a lot of growing pains expanding so fast but she’s gotta realize if I am a freelancer you can’t get upset when I work other things and they make my schedule difficult. I can see when she gets stressed she gets kinda nasty, so that coupled with the not really feeling like I’m doing much right is starting to really get me down.
It’s sad because I really did like the work at first. And I also see the stress the one person who does most of the costume work is under and it’s not fair. They are working 50ish hours a week but not getting PTO or sick days which I’m pretty sure is dancing on the lines of illegal. And the last thing is she doesn’t want pictures of the costumes we make for her anywhere online because she is worried about people copying. So I can’t even post to my personal IG as a way of getting more freelance gigs.
I dunno is it time to just take a step back? I’d love to still work with her next summer, it was a nice consistent gig instead of trying to find 2 or 3 different shows to work but it seems the negatives are outweighing the positives at this point and just to close, I’m very good at what I do. I can do a variety of different tasks in the costuming world and I’m fast so I don’t think I would have too hard of time finding other work. But who knows if the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.