English is not my native tongue, as it shows. Very long post.
Just as Covid started I was laid off from my previous work. I spent a couple months frantically looking for a job, and found an offer to work as a videographer for one of the largest companies in the country (more on this later). The position was advertised as Junior Assistant (I am relatively young, although I've been working every job I've been able to since I was 18. I was 24 at the time.)
I am a video technician. I specialize in animation, motion graphics, and editing video. Of course, I also know my way around cameras (although that's not my specialty). I was interviewed by the woman that was to be my manager, about all of my skillset and resume. My pay was pitiful, barely above minimum wage for a qualified job, but still I took it out of necessity.
The whole ordeal went as follows:
1.My manager (middle position) was a 30s' something young woman. Take the worst micromanaging, passive agressive boss you've had, mix it with a total negligence for technical knowledge (I was just asked to set up a recording set without any kind of budgeting, assistance nor help, because “it was my job”), and add the disgusting hustle mindset you see on social media. Except she believed that by siding with corporate each and every time we ran into problems was the way for her to claw up the corporate ladder. I was thrown under the bus when our overscheduled, overworked team couldn't deliver in time. Their whole marketing team were 5 people, and we're talking about an international corporation. There were times when I had recordings on the field simultaneous with bullshit PR meetings to decide “the feel of our next campaign”. She is one of the very few people I hold utter, real contempt for. She made my life miserable and never held an ounce of compassion for any of the workers under her responsibility. Also, she never sided with us for better wages, paid hours, etc., always siding with corporate. Basically like having the worst HR rep as your manager, full time. I'll end this part but the amount of passive-agressiveness, callouts and manipulation us lower-ends were subjected to was insane.
2.The position wasn't “junior” at all (no surprises here). I was immediately thrown into working at full throttle expecting the capacities of a senior technician. Usually doing extra hours, all unpaid. When I asked my manager, she said that “we're all a family and we all have to chip in”, “we gotta be thankful for having a job in these uncertain times…”, the regular corporate bullshit.
3.The second week I was asked to come in an hour earlier (i lived 40 minutes away from the work place, so it meant waking up at 4:30am) to finish a video edition for which I had been given minimal time to work on. When I had finished it, I asked my manager if I could go home earlier by one hour, since I had started one hour before. She looked at me puzzled, asked HR. She came back to me just to say that it was highly irregular, that if I wanted to leave early I had to do it today, no carry-overs. The time it took for her to ask already ate into the schedule, I left only 20 minutes early. Seems a one-time thing. It was not.
4.I worked in Europe. The office workers weren't unionized, despite having all the processes to do so (unlike the USA, where unionizing is a david vs. goliath struggle), whilst the factory ones were. Guess who had paid overtime, a better prospect of compensation, etc. All of my co-workers were spineless blobs of jelly, some had been working for 20+ years in the same position “in the hopes of someday making it to Regional manager” or some shit. Just endless corporate bootlicking. People who had burned their youths and lifes at the same desk job, without any recognition.
5.I was constantly demanded a degree of quality and polish that is to be expected of budgeted, timed projects. I was doing all this, mind you, for barely above minimum wage, whilst seeing the occasional freelance charge x2 what I was making monthly for doing a regular day's work. I was asked to manage these budgets and coordinate these professionals. All of this, whilst doing photography work, recordings, and performing uncounted menial tasks my manager couldn't be bothered with doing. Yeah, not ideal.
7.As the corporate photographer, I constantly had to take photos of visitors (CEOs, ambassadors, politicians…) who came for meetings. I was meant to photograph them, sprint to my workplace, print and frame the visit photos for them before they left for lunch on some of the most expensive restaurants in the city with the rest of the directives. I was lucky if I had 20 minutes to eat from a reheated tupperware. Seeing all of that overwhelmingly rich people pass me by each day, the corporate higher-ups flaunting their teslas and gifting rolexes to visitors, but they couldn't pay me above minimum wage or overtime hours. I don't care about money much, I am not an ambitious person. But I need it to live, as any other working-class bloke. I came to the end of the day to my 15-year old battered peugeot, knowing full well that a mechanical breakdown could send me into the red after paying for rent and food. I despised them wholeheartedly, who in their affluence treated me like garbage.
8.Probably, and this is the breaking point, I was doing all this nonstop, for a full work day+overtime, every day. I woke up, force-fed and drove before sunrise, worked at full speed for really demanding technical tasks which admitted no screwups, and went home after sundown, after unpaid overtime. Many days I went without lunch, because my manager constantly asked me last minute tasks of the utmost urgency. I came home just in time to eat dinner, cry for a while, and sleep six hours. I could have slept seven, but I owed myself an hour of something that wasn't working or feeding myself. I often woke with anxiety in the middle of the night.
9.After Covid passed, the entire team was very burned out. We had delivered, on-time, all the time, with an excellent degree of quality. All campaigns, ads, videos, promotional material were on point. We went the extra mile. Since the beginning I already had a very anti-corporate mindset (which only deepened as time passed) but I suppose I kept going on for the rest of the work team, since my workload would've fallen onto them. By the end of the second year we were given our yearly wage revision. The wage revision was of a 3% increase (inflation was 3.7%), and a powerpoint given by our manager quoting motivational posts. And a paintball session with unpaid dinner. Needless to say, I refused the paintball teambuilding and the dinner.
That week I decided to quit. I went freelance. I told my manager (she tried to gaslit me one last time, arguing that I hadn't given a two-weeks prior notice, which I did by duplicate e-mail) and I can only hope she rots as my workload falls onto her. I wasn't offered a counteroffer, which I'd have refused anyways. Fuck them.
It's been four months now, I'm a bit poorer and a bit desperate, but I sleep soundly again. I have time to cook and eat well.
I'll hold onto this animosity for a long time. They have turned me bitter and anxious. There's no overly positive outlook, but I don't feel like a battered dog anymore. I have my dignity again.