How the quest for a dream job led me to toxic workplaces

You will often find articles, essays and social media posts online about living your dreams and finding the dream job. Well, for me my dream job was to cover films, interview Bollywood celebs and write film reviews. It was pretty much my ambition since I was 12 since I was fascinated by Bollywood stars and their lives. I grew up watching films and tv shows, more than any average kid. I knew it in my heart that entertainment is where I want to land up. So after I finished my graduation as luck would have it, I got a chance to write for a small-time magazine, even though it wasn’t paying well. I got a chance to attend events, premieres, song launches and suddenly life couldn’t get or feel better. I moved onto greener pastures soon after but one thing remained the same in these workplaces. Their toxicity. I have freelanced, worked part-time and full-time at a lot of media houses and what surprises me is how even the bigger corporates tend to mistreat their employees or have no employee-friendly polices. I have even worked in places which have no HR or any policies in place and the way to get a job in such places is by knowing the founders. Some places don’t pay much, some don’t pay on time, some companies will deduct money and blame you for shoddy work.

Soon, I started realising that while I entered the field because I loved films and cinema, the publications- print and website were obsessed with the lives of celebrities. For them, page views is all that matters. Doesn’t matter even if you are doing stories that go against your principles. There are publications who need to show their investors ‘numbers’ and would do anything to achieve it. Soon I became disillusioned by this field, but what wasn’t prepared for was landing myself in the most toxic workplace I have ever encountered.

I got through the online department of a well-known print publication, which has a seemingly liberal ethos and the print journalists who work for them are some of the best journalists out there. However, the online department is a farcry from their print counterpart. Knowing very well, how I was interested in writing about cinema and films, the editor assured me that this is what I would be doing. But on the very first day, when a colleague was introducing me to the work, it seemed to me as if it was the job of an uploader. There was more content uploading to be done than actual content creation. I raised my objections to the Head HR and the Editor, after the first day itself, but they managed to convince me that things would settle down and I shouldn’t judge the work on the basis of day one. However, things did not change, only got worse. The online team was supposed to work in tandem with the print team, however, the online team was basically comprising of glorified uploaders who were called journalists, but spent their entire day uploading photo-galleries. I was handling the entertainment section, which meant I had to sit on Instagram, Twitter, the entire day waiting for a celebrity to share a picture or some post so I could immediately make a news article on it. Even if a single post from a celebrity was missed we used to get messages from the marketing head on Whatsapp groups about it. There were times when the marketing heads used to share these posts on whatsapp groups reminding us how an XYZ website carried a news based on that photo or post before us. Every day we were expected to make slideshows on the lines of ‘Actresses who got pregnant before marriage, ‘actresses who married rich businessmen’, actresses showing off their baby bumps’ all for the page views. My day used to begin late since I worked in the afternoon shift and used to go on till 12 at night. There was an unhealthy competition between the teams who were handling other sections such as city, news, sports, lifestyle etc as entertainment used to be the one getting the maximum page views. The page views were divided section wise as well. There were daily meetings discussing dips in page views, rises in page views, however not a single meeting was held over the need for putting out good and relevant content. Our KRAs were changed thrice in the same year, and in it we were assumed to be content managers and not journalists.

There were times we used to fight amongst ourselves due to the work pressure, as we all knew that missing out any update from any celebrity would mean getting rebuked by the marketing head. To top the page view targets, we had story targets. Which basically meant we had to file agency copies blindly and at times even press releases, just to match the numbers. There were couple of times when I used to take small breaks in the evening time and go down for a cup of coffee with a colleague, only to get messages from my reporting manager asking me questions about the work.Which meant he was being informed about the fact that I took a break. Any celebrity passing away, or getting married meant double the work as we had to live track it. Put up stories with minute by minute update. In my tenure of one year, I barely wrote 2 original stories, what I did more was upload photo galleries of celeb-spotting. We were expected to do push-notification updates, social media updates in addition to all the uploading work we did.We worked on alternate weekends and Sunday was a day everyone dreaded. Reason? There used to be just 2 desk editors at work who had to look after the social media updates, push notifications and ensuring the print stories were published. Nothing had to be missed out. There were days when we worked over 12 hours on Sundays and yet any dip in pageviews was immediately reported by the marketing head. For some strange reason, I never knew why the desk team had to do social media updates even though there was a social media team in place, who had holidays on the weekends. I developed serious health issues and my mental health went for a toss.

I finally took a call when I fell sick for the umpteenth time in February 2018, that this is not what I signed up for and quit. When I discussed it with a colleague, he messaged me saying how I shouldn’t quit and that my team needed me. I said, I am lying in the hospital and I can’t afford to fall sick like this. He had the gall to call me ‘worthless’ and ‘good for nothing’ and that the company didn’t deserve people like me. Leaves on working weekends weren’t allowed and this company did not have a concept of a sick leave. Any leave meant snarky comments from the co-workers who had to cover up for the absent employee. I took the job thinking how a good brand would reflect nicely on my resume, but this was a job straight out of hell. This company did not care for their employees. They did not care for the health of their employees. There was no work-life balance. Even after working hours you had to be available constantly on the office whatsapp groups, where the marketing heads and COO had to share their ‘valuable’ inputs. If ever you were to not reply on the whatsapp group to any message, you were immediately asked to report to the marketing head. We used to daily put in over 10 hours without any acknowledgement of the efforts. Also, there was this unsaid rule about publishing and filing morbid stories as they used to guarantee more clicks and pageviews. The kind of negativity that went on at this place was alarming.

I realised too late in life that one can pursue dreams even with conventional jobs. One doesn’t need to follow a dream job and end up in a toxic situation. So what if you get to wear t-shirts to work, that does not mean you would get steady income and salary. When you fall sick, you realise how important is healthcare and health insurance and that any job giving you these benefits is the one you should opt for. What people need to do is find jobs which give certain benefits and the employee is able to have a work-life balance. Ensure that the company has HR -friendly policies as well. Fin.