No Longer Among The Favored Few
“You know we can all do good if we are put someplace where we have a chance.” The Passer says and purses her lips. “I don’t care who they put here, they wouldn’t do any good.”
“They should at least share the wealth once in a while.” I say. “I don’t mind there only being one good account a week, I just mind the same people working it every time.”
When I first started working for The Company I work for now, I was one of the Favored Ones. I didn’t know it at the time. I kept hearing the Passers talk about how things would get better-while for me things were already pretty good. So I kept waiting for it to get better, which it did for a few weeks. At the end of that first year my Camera had the most sales-a little over six hundred thousand dollars-and I had shot the most sits-I’ll be honest, I don’t remember that number. It’s been all downhill from there.
I have now come see that this is The Company Way. The Managers pick someone, apparently at random, and anoint them the Chosen One who gets all the good accounts and therefore makes all the big paychecks. I have no idea what I did to earn this lofty position in my first year, nor do I know what I did to be cast out to beg for alms after that first year. All I know is that there is a New Anointed One in the Photography division and that the same two people always get the good accounts in the Pass department. The Company Line is that ‘We put our best people on our best accounts.‘ Uh, yeah, right.
The result is that a not very good photographer is now a Trainer and is handed all the good accounts. I like both the Passers who get all the good accounts, but I never get to work with them any more. I also like most of the other Passers I work with, who also never get to work the good accounts. I didn’t know that I was being favored that first year, I thought everyone else was doing pretty good as well. Then I found this little dodad online where I could see how much more money I was making than everyone else. I was dumb enough then to think that it was because my Portraits were so much better. Now I know that I was just given the good Shoots.
We still have that little dodad to check the sales, but I hardly ever look anymore-its just too depressing. I have about half as much money as the Anointed One, which isn’t fair. I know, life isn’t fair, get over it. But this isn’t life, this is company policy that blatantly favors one employee over all other employees. Any of us can do good at a Good Shoot and even the best can’t do well at a Bad Shoot.
There should be some kind of rotation, or at the very least, some kind of lottery, where we each have a shot at the Good Shoots. If you have people, Photographers or Passers who really can’t do well at a Buying Shoot, then they need to be fired, not shuffled off to bad Shoots until they quit as they need to eat. Part of the problem is the seasonal nature of the job-The Company hires people because they will need them for a few months. Only they never have the balls to tell these people that they are being hired for the Busy Season, so they go to the trouble and expense of training people who quit in a matter of weeks or months.
No system is ever perfect, but The Company’s current system is far from perfect, unless you happen to be one of those two or three Favored Ones. There are a lot of us that really should find something else to do, but there is nowhere left to go. I work with a number of Passers who tell me they are going to quit every time I work with them, only to see them again six months later. Every time I work with another photographer I make more money on the shoot than that photographer-even if they are one of the Favored Ones.
All things being equal, and of course all things are never equal, I can make more money than most of the other Assembly Line Portrait Photographers. We all think we are the Best-really, like Mohammad Ali, we all know we are the best. This is why we seldom listen to anyone, react with horror when people don’t love our portraits, and often give off an air of aloof arrogance. The current Favored One likes to frown and jut his chin out like Benito Mussolini while he makes his sage pronouncements. The fact that he is not that good a photographer makes it kind of annoying that he is a Trainer and thinks he is a Real Photographer, unlike the rest of us. Of course, I tend to think that about myself.