I am working for an indie at the minute who have just merged with another. Due to the nature of my series, I have inherited a new executive. All seemed good for the first couple of weeks until their personality started to shine through: it wasn’t pleasant to say the least.
The executive constantly questioned my decisions as a production manager, even though I had worked on the series for a full year before their arrival and had ten years’ experience under my belt. I was told to explain my actions when a member of staff's contract dates was apparently miscommunicated (the contractor later apologised for not reading his contract properly).
I was also told that they "could not do my job for me" when I asked for their input into updating the post schedule. Despite the fact they had previously re-done my post schedule and wanted to have full control due to deadlines (not something I had agreed to as you can imagine).
At times I thought I was being too sensitive and that I should 'Woman Up'. I started to think I was just very hormonal and actually questioned if I was starting to experience menopause. I finally lost it and called my head of production who was amazing and totally backed me up. It took a couple of days before I had a call from the executive who actually apologised for "being a total bitch". Something I didn't really want to hear but it was good to know I wasn’t going mad.
I still don’t feel comfortable working there now but I have a few more weeks to go and with a family to feed and no further work lined up, I am powering through. I personally haven't worked with someone who made me feel this inadequate for quite some time.
TV has got better over the years but, with no HR in place at some indies, there are still a lot of people getting away with abuse.