Most Professional Revenge Stories on Reddit
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What happens in the photographer’s job and why is the company’s business model problematic?
I'm going back in time about 15 years for this story, but I'm still reaping my rewards from it. Back then, I worked for The Company. They did three-phase photography, focusing mainly on family and children. No wedding or events or anything like that. Straight studio work that was in a portable setting. Sittings booked for 10 minutes, and we were supposed to shoot 30 to 50 of those a day. Yeah, it was as wretched of a job as it sounds. It was fast, high energy, and at times, simply brutal. There were three phases of this operation that you need to be aware of for background information. First, the pre-seller. They come in two to three weeks in advance and sell a special 10x13 portrait and book the appointment.
Two, the photographer, that's me in this instance. We come in for about a week and take the pictures. Three, the salesperson returns two weeks later with the special along with the other six poses that I took and tries to sell you $400 worth of pictures. Now I was pretty good at what I did. The company sales average was about $100 per customer per 50 customers. The more you shoot, the lower your quality because you spend less time taking care of details and details, those sell pictures. My average was around 175ish per 150-200 customers. I was making this company a lot of money, and they consistently treated me like crap. Their business model was shoot as many sittings as you can as fast as you can.
To them, shooting 50 customers with a $100 average was better than shooting 35 customers with a $150 average, even though the profit margin was exactly the same. I never agreed with that, and Boss and I went round and round about it every week. They withheld raises because I didn't have enough sittings and took my bonuses from me because I wasn't meeting their quotas. So I figured out how to be fast, efficient, and damn good, but that's for another post. So there's the background. Now onto the good stuff. Enter The Jerk. The Jerk is a preseller who lied to the customers. He lied to the stores, and he would book appointments from 9am to 8.30pm even though the studio hours were 10am to 7pm. He told every lie in the book, and I think he even added a few of his own.
Want to bring your dog? Family of 15. Sure you can bring five changes of clothes and hey, I'll even have her do your makeup for you. Come and get your picture taken and we'll even throw in a free toaster. And just to make it interesting, he would triple and quadruple book appointments. And when he ran out of those, he would just sell open appointments. Telling people to come in anytime and the photographer will be happy to work with you. Ugh, just writing that makes me mad even after all these years. My biggest problem was that he would waive the sitting fee or just not tell the customers about it. But I was obligated to collect that $8 from every customer. Every time I didn't, it would come out of my check, and that was a fucking nightmare.
I refused to work behind the jerk for these and a thousand other reasons. I told my boss that if they ever put me behind the jerk again, that I would quit, which is exactly what happened. They knew he had been working at the store I was assigned to and they lied to me about it. When I learned about it, I immediately called my boss and told him this was my last week and that he needed to make arrangements to get the photography equipment at the end of the shoot. I should have walked out, but I was young and dumb. It was a 3 day shoot and I shot 316 customers by myself. That is an insane amount of sittings and nobody was happy.
How did the preseller’s lies and triple-booking create chaos for the photographer?
Every night the store manager had to tell my customers to leave because the store was closed. People were lined up at 9am waiting for me. I took so much abuse that week. After a customer threw a shoe at me and another spit on my pizza, the store security guard brought a chair over and stayed with me almost the entire time I was on shift. I honestly cannot remember how many people were escorted out of the store because they acted a fool in the studio.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What happens in the photographer’s job and why is the company’s business model problematic?
0:17–4:00
2
How did the preseller’s lies and triple-booking create chaos for the photographer?
4:00–10:02
3
What made the photographer decide to quit and take the equipment?
10:02–26:01
4
How did the photographer hide the studio rig and trigger the storage auction plan?
26:01–28:54