Worked the Vikings game. It's a stressful position, but sometimes I don't feel the stress so much as empathize with those that do. People yell a lot at the place I work at, and if it's not towards me, it's towards those that I work with.
Sunday's game wound up being typical, sadly. It started off great; people from the other truck weren't being overbearing or assholish, and that meant that there was grand comity between those in our booth and us day players. Unfortunately, one of the guys' words before the game started, that he had a feeling that "they were going to get yelled at," proved all too prophetic.
It happened in the fourth quarter. There was some chaos, but the director and/or producer was absolutely fucking condescending to the guy who hired me, telling him that his work was "nonsense." Totally uncalled for, total asshole move. I wanted to get up and punch the guy, for him, who's a really good guy. He took it in stride, I think because this is what he wants to do and, ultimately, if he succeeds in this business he'll be able to get away from this son-of-a-bitch. But it's got to be so hard to keep knuckling under this bully's insults.
There was another guy, a good guy, who was working next to him. After the game was over we chatted a little bit about that little bitch and his bitchy remark. Things could get nasty, he said, but hey, the check is really, really nice. Just as I expected, especially when dealing with sports television. Moreover, as a freelancer this guy doesn't have to deal with the verbal abuse my supervisor/boss has to deal with as a full-fledged member of the production crew.
I wonder if that's good enough, dealing with someone's bullshit in order to make a great living. Maybe freelancing isn't distant enough. And so I go back to my "career" as a lifelong temp. There is no security and, like with this project that's winding down, I have the stress of figuring out where my next paycheck's going to come from. But there are upsides to that. For one thing I won't ever have the feeling of getting the rug pulled out from under me, which might happen if I have a full-time job that I suddenly lose because business is slow or whatever. But what Sunday illustrated is that as a temp (and an entry-level one at that) little of the condescension comes to me, because I'm too insignificant to matter. Verbal diatribes are hurled at people who are in positions of some power, like I kind of am with this project now, even though I am a temp. That means that even though the paycheck's smaller, I can walk away and leave work at work behind me, and I don't have any responsibilities once I walk out that door. And that is so, so important when it comes to dealing with stress brought on by those who are above you in the organizational chart. Life's too short to deal with crap at work. It's just work. I have quality-of-life needs to worry about.
So this weekend reminded me why I have been a life-long temp.
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