If they wanna get me making toys…
May 2025
If you’ve made it this far into this series of meanderings and misrememberings, you may have come to realize that far and away my single greatest talent is to complain.
The weather, the traffic, politics, the industry, my classes, my bosses, my parents, my friends, my peers. No one is above my critical and nihilistic eye. Not even myself.
This penchant for complaining stems not just from a self-indulgent and pessimistic dissatisfaction with life but rather from a genuine desire for things to improve. For better or worse, my complaining comes from a recognition of problems. I don’t desire to complain just for complaining’s sake but rather a genuine belief that these issues can and should be resolved.
This attitude, of course, defined most of my experience working at Universal, where I clocked in every day kicking and screaming not just for my sake but for the sake of my fellow team members, who at this point I had unexpectantly become quite fond of.
Well, a select few of them at least.
Butting heads with more than a few of the managers over issues of scheduling and fair working conditions, I eventually become quite acquainted with the department of Human Resources, who called me out for several meetings after I emailed them a litany of issues plaguing our work venue (as well as drafting a few emails in behalf of my coworkers who also wanted to air their grievances in a professional manner).
But in truth, beyond my altruistic desire for justice, I must admit I also have quite an appetite for controversy and rebelliousness. Often seeking a cure to my own boredom, I took pride in occasionally stirring the pot by mocking work events, sardonically filling out personality questionaries (who can forget my vivid description of “waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay” as my favorite summer activity), and even rigging employee of the month elections by coordinating team members to vote for the least driven employee each month.
This latter streak of electoral fraud was put to a swift end when we tried to nominate the team member with the most absences, resulting in our managers throwing out the votes and awarding ME employee of the month instead.
Touché.
Even so, my official employee of the month certificate highlighted (in a somewhat tongue and cheek way) my leadership abilities and my willingness to “speak up for myself and my fellow team members.”
I solve your problems because I can’t solve my own.
This thought crossed my mind on several occasions. After all, I’m not sure I would have become so involved in this cesspool of controversies and dramas if my own life and career wasn’t at a standstill.
I mean, I genuinely did care for the well being of my newfound friends and coworkers. Many of us had forged a real life bond facing up against the incessant flames of customer service and corporate greed.
But. As time went on. As workplace drama began to cycle through its predictable seasons. As younger and younger hires arrived to the butcher’s assembly line. As opportunity after opportunity seemed to simply pass me by. I grew tired of caring. Of being the only one that cared.
To top it all off, for the first time in my life, I felt… well, old.
May sound silly to some, a then 24-year-old fearing that their time has passed. Yet it felt like only yesterday that I was mopping the floors at Regal, contemplating my youth through Simon and Garfunkel’s “Leaves that are Green”.
I was 21 years-when I wrote this song.
I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long.
In a few months I’d be 25.
As one of the older people among the retail employees, I found myself often feeling like a babysitter, surrounded by what felt like highschoolers, or more accurately, young adults in arrested development.
And the “grown ups” were no better.
Countless childish rivalries brewed between millennials and gen-Xers, often pitting their favorite team members against one another in order to win an argument or prove a point
No. I don’t have any strong opinions about what colors we decorate the back room with. I don’t care if you want orange and our assistant manager wants multiple colors. Why the fuck haven’t we hired new people since last August?
But of course they don’t have strong opinions about that. For I saw in the eyes of my management team a complete lack of motivation. A rather complacent and apathetic attitude towards their jobs and teams, working only for their weekend. Overtaken by a wholly unhealthy dose of “well, it is what it is.”
It is what it is.
And now I was a team lead. And with a looming expectation that someday I’d be joining them in management.
Everyday felt like an episode of The Bear. Except without any of the character growth or development. Hell, people just seemed to be getting worse.
It was a sitcom with diminishing laughs, as more and more of us realized that resetting personalities between episodes is far more of an inescapable hell than the episodic structure of TV would have you believe.
The Good Place had a point, we were in the bad place.
Meanwhile, it had been nearly two weeks since we wrapped production on 25.
While development didn’t go without a few hiccups, production itself had actually been fairly smooth. I had the full support of Vee, who championed the project from the very start and dove headfirst into all the producer duties of what would become the debut film of our production company, NITROGLYCERIN MEDIA. As the project took its next step into post production, our filmmaking dreams had found new life. Even if just the faintest of pulses to remind us what this was all about.
Because above all, this project. That single day on set. Reaffirmed in my mind that this was exactly what I was meant to do. To direct.
Knowing a fair share of young creatives also stuck in the thankless universal jobs, I had invited several of them to form part of this project. Hoping to inspire in them a similar hunger to create on our own terms. On the actual day of shooting, a close friend of mine took me aside and remarked “I’ve never seen you this driven before!”
Well. Yeah.
This is what I was meant to do.
I was a director. I knew for certain right then and there.
How could I go back to Universal after that?
To go back and see the same old tired routines. To watch as everyone around me gave up on their dreams. Stuck in a game of looking forward to their next rest. Even ones younger than me. Giving up on going back to school. Losing hope on their career aspirations. For their dreams of higher education, creative careers, and more to be thoroughly replaced with dreams of managerial roles.
I found myself at a crossroads. I could continue at Universal. To continue waiting for that entry level opportunity development opportunity within the studio system. But at $25/hr, I was already making more money that I would ever make at any entry level job.
Assistant to Jr assistant’s dog walker- $17/Hr
One of the reasons I pursued development roles within studios in the first place was because I believed these full-time office positions signified a level of job security that independent productions could not guarantee. In my mind, I could leverage my education and experience to find some stability while I slowly worked towards the real endgame of writing and directing. But the last year proved that there was no such thing as job security.
Everytime Blumhouse released a box-office bomb (M3gan 2.0, The Exorcist, ) news outlets would report about the massive waves of layoffs throughout the company. These announcements were not uncommon in the industry, but now carried a far more personal and sinister tone when recognizing more than a few names on those mass-layoff articles.
Though I never did read any article about a massive wave of hires after the company’s box office successes. Funny how that goes.
Looking ahead, far an away the most financially secure choice was Universal. Team lead today, supervisor tomorrow. And as for the job itself, well just about anyone could do. Poorly, I suppose. One could phone it in, clock in and out, working only for their weekend (if I ever got a proper one). I could stay on this course of increasingly higher pay and benefits.
I could.
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