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Stop paying<br />
us too much<br />
The creative industry<br />
faces staffing challenges<br />
and high turnover – but<br />
the reasons are often<br />
more bizarre than you’d<br />
realize.<br />
any of us have dreamed of working in media since we<br />
decided to use crayons for drawing rather than eating.<br />
M That was certainly the case for me: I wanted to be<br />
a journalist since I can remember, and I spent many an hour<br />
from the age of ten creating newspapers using Letraset transfer<br />
letters, and no end of patience. My debut issue, which was<br />
subsequently shown to the school assembly (<strong>com</strong>plete with<br />
utterly embarrassing Samantha Fox Dates Local Schoolboy<br />
headline), didn’t dampen my enthusiasm one jot.<br />
Fast-forward a few years, and I remember nervously taking<br />
the entrance exam for my longed-for and heavily oversubscribed<br />
journalist degree, and almost bolting from the room when<br />
I saw the <strong>com</strong>petition. Not only was I the only bloke without a<br />
ponytail, but I was the only one that didn’t take the paper with<br />
my feet perched on the table while smoking a roll-up. Everyone<br />
was hip, could name-drop with ease, and seemed destined to<br />
reside in the lofty towers of a glamorous media industry.<br />
So it <strong>com</strong>es as no surprise, really, when reality hits home.<br />
People think media – in all its guises – is a non-stop riot of<br />
parties, dar-lings, air kisses, baggy cargo pants, and workplaces<br />
with ball pools and pinball machines. This attitude probably<br />
explains the latest findings from The Creative Group, which<br />
asked the top 1,000 media agencies why people quit. The<br />
following are all real reasons why media personnel walk.<br />
Headlining the list were gems such as one employee<br />
didn’t like to use a <strong>com</strong>puter and felt the job simply<br />
wasn’t glamorous enough. Really? You mean<br />
deadlines, the need to understand pixels,<br />
and boring client meetings are the<br />
reality of today’s world?<br />
Of course, environment makes a difference. One employee<br />
quit because he didn’t like the smell of the studio, and another<br />
walked because the studio lighting “wasn’t right”. And as for<br />
the bizarre excuse one departing designer made – that he was<br />
making too much money and didn’t feel he was worth it – that’s<br />
just nuts.<br />
Some employees you do actually want to be rid of, such<br />
as this collection: one person was bored, and left; another felt<br />
he was over-employed; while a third quit because she didn’t<br />
want to work so hard, and besides, the location wasn’t terribly<br />
exciting. The staffer who left to join the Witness Protection<br />
Program in the US probably shouldn’t have made it through<br />
the door in the first place.<br />
One such Marie Celeste moment happened to me. A flighty<br />
designer had just started working on a sister magazine in a<br />
previous <strong>com</strong>pany, when she popped out for lunch after her first<br />
morning, and never came back. A second woman left abruptly,<br />
texting us a few days later saying that life was too short, and<br />
she was off to travel the world. Maybe it was my Sam Fox<br />
jokes?<br />
All this simply shows that working in the creative industry<br />
is much like any other business. Crappy Monday mornings,<br />
rubbish jokes from fellow workers, pale skin from the florescent<br />
lighting, and gritty eyes from staring at your monitor. Still, it<br />
beats being a lawyer, dar-ling.<br />
Matthew Bath<br />
d 31<br />
opinion
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