I’m grateful someone had the bravery to sue my last job and open a class action lawsuit. I took that job because it was the only place that was willing to give me film industry experience. The goal was just to spend a few months to a year gaining experience then move on to something better, but of course, it didn’t work out that way.
In the class action notice, my job denied not paying overtime. I laughed when I saw that.
Here’s the ridiculous things I went through at the job, who were so cheap by the way:
We had to clock out at 6 and work past 6 without pay to get work done. I often did at least an hour of overtime a few days a week. A ton of people were fired if you couldn’t meet the high volume of work. 8 hours a day was not enough.
The office was cheap, and was located far away instead of being central in the city. My commute was anywhere from 1-1.5 hours. Everyone else also has crappy commutes. But we were trying to gain experiences and get to the next opportunity. Having to commute this much gave me car maintenance issues that cost $, on top of spending for gas. These unexpected expenses ended up being put on my credit card.
We were charged a small fee per paycheck to park in the garage. There was no street parking.
I paid at least a few hundred dollars for health insurance per month. Which decreased my take home pay. This was just for the bare minimum HMO.
They outsourced work. I remember a few countries were hit by natural disasters, and one person out in Southeast Asia still went into work during a typhoon to help us meet our deadline. Americans at my job didn’t care about the natural disaster.
They’d bicker if you log in 15 min overtime in a day. They even one time shaved off my overtime to make it an even 40 hours.
During the holidays, they have potlucks where people brought food so they’d avoid paying for catering. I learned later in life this is a red flag in a company, that they’re being cheap.
They had us attend a team building event after work that was unpaid and mandatory…then company said they won’t pay for food/drinks. Luckily, our supervisors just paid out of their pocket to make the experience enjoyable
They did not have upgraded software. We used a generic or knock off Adobe Final Cut Pro…then production companies would complain that our film was not playing correctly or something looked a bit off. They demanded to know if we are using the industry standard adobe, and we had to lie and go around their question. How fucking expensive is adobe per year?
I had a coworker who used to earn $13 per hour before being moved into my position for better pay. He would bully us when he thought we weren’t working hard enough. Anytime I’d pull out my phone, he’d taunt me. He’s seriously has Stockholm syndrome for a company that overworks and paid him $13 , it’s laughable at this point.
A production company didn’t pay us a full amount on an invoice. They were $5 short. Instead of closing this out, my boss had me chase this $5 …for 6 months. I am convinced that this company prob found it entertaining and let it go on this long just for laughs.
I deserve this class action lawsuit check, and glad that my company was sued. This will likely cause layoffs for them, as they had to pay a couple million dollars in settlement. Seeing them lose this $ feels satisfying, especially when my company bickers over $5 or anything so little.
The only thing is that I’m bummed out about is that this won’t cover all my credit debt. I feel like I’m basically paying to have a job, from car maintenance, car insurance, gas, food. I took classes to get more experience, spent money on resume writing services/help when no one was calling me back to interview, losing money to working for free, when the company ended up hiring people who with zero experience anyways and who seemed to put less effort in their career search.