Being a reporter or photographer in the news business requires a degree of flexibility in work hours. Even if you've survived the business long enough to land the elusive 930 AM to 630 PM work day, you never know what hours you'll end up working.
And so when there's an active shooting or scandal in the mayor's office you may not get your one hour lunch break. You may be required to stay late. That's life. But so is overtime pay. Once you put in over 40 hours for the week, it's time and a half baby. People ain't gonna work for free. Nor should they be expected to.
Well, invariably we'd get an email on a Monday from the New Director complaining about too much overtime. "Take your breaks" would be the gist of his correspondence with us underlings. No doubt the business manager had given him an earful in the morning manager's meeting. Whatever. If able, everybody takes their lunch break. People would be extra mindful, but only for a day or two. But then some big story always comes up during the week and the vicious cycle continued. Hey, sorry, the guy that just lost custody of his kids doesn't give two craps about your labor costs. Send out an amber alert. A full crew is headed toward the scene. And in a perfect world, news gets covered regardless of the bottom line.
One day the near weekly email infuriated me. I wish I still had that email. But it's been years. The gist of the email was this:
- get your work done
- take your breaks
- meet your deadlines
- work harder
- work smarter
- do not get overtime
Do not be maliciously obedient. The quality of your work shall not diminish.
This, after pay freezes. Layoffs every few years. We had fewer people doing more work for, after inflation, less pay. And we were expected to obey, non-maliciously.
For management to be so terrible at, well managing, and to put it all on the workers is probably par for the course I guess. They demanded more work. Better results. They essentially expected you to work off the clock during your "break". And expected you to stay late for free. And no, they never explicitly said this for fear of legal reprisal. It was all implicit. Plausible deniability doncha know? And if you didn't comply with their implied demands, you were accused of nothing short of sabotage. No wonder the TV News business is seeing more and more reporters, producers, and photographers burn out (to say nothing of the harm of over nine years of shouting "fake news").
And the young kids graduating from college and jumping into industry don't have a clue. Welcome to the team!
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