Ruth Fowler

Thank you.

I'm so happy to be here.

Well, the industry, as everybody knows, is really not going through a great time right now.

It's really in flux.

A lot of screenwriters are really suffering right now.

And we're all trying to find different jobs, different ways to survive.

So I was on a Facebook group with a bunch of WGA moms, actually.

And somebody mentioned that they were working for a company called Mercor for $150 an hour as a writer.

And I was like, OK, I'm going to look into that.

That sounds kind of interesting.

It is probably one of the worst jobs I've ever had.

Basically, they kind of advertise it as you can do this wherever you want.

You can do it on your own time.

But that means that you have to be chained to the laptop because what actually happens is they release what's known as tasks at any time of the day or night.

And often they kind of...

They hire way too many people.

So people are just kind of scrabbling around like it's the French Revolution, like trying to get these tasks and waiting for hours.

So what I found is I actually didn't have any life while I was doing it.

They were incredibly boring.

Some of the tasks were kind of watching like a video, which was taken from Instagram and transcribing every tiny little second of it.