I am lucky to now be in a senior position in the industry working as an Executive Producer of documentaries and factual television. I work at an indie which, although it still suffers from various industry-wide issues (mainly dealing with Broadcaster's unrealistic expectations paired with insufficient budgets - which undeniably have an impact on the mental health of all the personnel involved in making productions) it is not a place which would tolerate the sort of bullying I witnessed and experienced previously in my career.
These were experiences which very nearly lead to me leaving the industry and which have directly contributed to over a decade and a half of poor mental health. Something I continue to struggle with to this day. I spent the first four or five years of my television career working at a very small independent factual production company run by an overbearing and bullying owner/Executive Producer.
At the time I was very inexperienced and it felt like a great career break, especially as I was constantly being promoted - seemingly achieving a more senior role on each and every production. I felt very much that my employer must have seen in me something special and that belief kept me from appreciating the reality of the situation.
I was not the only young and inexperienced individual to be brought into that company and what I now realise is that we were there (and were being rapidly promoted) for two reasons. Firstly, for an independent production company attempting to produce programmes on unrealistic budgets, it made more economic sense to push young and less experienced people into more major roles because they would be cheaper and would lack any frame of reference of what constitutes "best practice" in other parts of the industry - no matter that they also lacked the training and experience to be able to properly cope with the responsibilities and pressures that came with these roles.
Secondly, rapidly promoted staff at the start of their careers would feel indebted to their employer and would therefore be far less likely to complain about poor working practices and the bullying nature that existed at a company that was providing them with such an invaluable career break.
Unfortunately, extremely poor working practices and appalling bullying are exactly what I, and others, experienced for a number of years at the hands of that company’s owner. In retrospect I can only describe the dynamic which existed between me and him at that time as being akin to that between a domestic abuser and his victim.
The professional demands placed upon me as a mid-20’s first time producer were simply horrific. I was increasingly pressured into accepting further “opportunities” to have a greater involvement in commissioned projects. What this meant in reality was being expected to pick up the roles of more and more professional staff whose presence on productions would have eaten into company profits.
Soon I was undertaking a mix of producing, directing, production coordinating, shooting, sound recording and editing on a number of productions as the production teams continued to shrink. I received absolutely no training for the ever increasing demands being put upon me and the pressure I was under was insane. My entire life was soon dominated by my career. Weekends were virtually non-existent and I frequently worked fifteen hour days in a desperate attempt to meet looming deadlines.
I was not the only person employed by that company to keep a pillow and sleeping bag beneath my desk throughout an edit in order to grab a few hours’ sleep on the office floor and save on the time that would have been lost by commuting home. Despite every effort, deadlines were simply impossible to meet and, when they were missed, responsibility was laid soundly at the door of the person who had near broken themselves in an attempt to meet them. As a consequence, when there was an overrun, I often felt compelled to “volunteer” to work several weeks unpaid at the end of a production just so the budget could be squared off.
But why would anyone submit themselves to such a situation? Put simply, the only thing worse than the horrific work pressure was the constant fear of the employer’s ire. The owner of the company worked remotely from his home in another part of the country and whilst working for him, the fear of his characteristically abusive texts, telephone calls and emails, berating me (or another of his employees) for one perceived failure or another became a simple fact of life.
There was no such thing as “office hours” and a call could come through at any time of day or night. There was no respect for “personal time” and I remember one weekend having to leave a significant family occasion to be screamed at down the telephone for an hour because a presenter had failed to arrive at his destination for a shoot. The airline had cancelled his flight, but this was still unequivocally my fault despite me not being the production manager.
Working for this individual for several years led me to experience terrible levels of stress and anxiety and extreme self-doubt. I constantly questioned my own worth and yet never seemed to recognise the fact that the issue was clearly not with me - after all I was continually re-employed production after production.
I was also not the only person to suffer. I witnessed a colleague, a few years younger than me (extremely talented, hardworking and full of potential), experience a full mental breakdown after having been placed in charge of a production at this company where the resources available were desperately inadequate to meet the expectation of the channel. This colleague confessed to me later to having been contemplating suicide at the time due to the stress. Luckily he managed to secure desperately needed mental health support but his experience put an end to his career. At a stroke he quit his job, the industry and London and has never returned.
I was once fired by my employer (via an angry and drunken text sent at 11 one night and not relating to anything to do with the production) but like an abused partner I soon found myself returning on the next production - keen to make amends and prove myself once again. I had been so beaten down for so many years that I lacked the confidence to believe that I was good enough to be employed by anyone else.
Eventually, after I was berated in front of another colleague with the claim that I was a drug addict (apparently only that could explain my shortcomings), I finally departed. Of course I found that, having undertaken so many roles I was in fact very employable and I walked straight into a new job with a new company and was amazed to discover that the environment I had been subjected to was not “industry standard” as had so often been claimed.
In the years after I left this man’s employment I was contacted by a number of people who were then working for him who wanted to unburden to me with tales of their unhappiness. But even having managed to leave myself, this individual continued his outpouring of vitriol against me with more than one verbally abusive phone calls, a series of anonymous emails and even demeaning me publicly in a written publication.
Despite my appalling start in the industry I have achieved a successful career in television but the mental scars are there. Over several years I have had to undergo counselling on several occasions and my experiences with this individual inevitably end up being recognised as a cause of my mental health issues. I remain on medication to this day. I do believe that in the last 15-20 years these sorts of sadistic Executives have become tolerated less in our industry, but sadly I do know that they are not yet an extinct species. The individual I refer to may not have achieved great success but I do know he continues to own a production company and continues to receive commissions major broadcasters.
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