Holding it down solo.

From the comments on yesterday's post:
"I am the only one who works in our studio. Yup. No Assistant manager...and 2 other girls who are flex. yeah...I work a lot. I would love for them to fire me; they would be so screwed. No one wants to work here. Guess how much I make as a manager? Come on...guess: I am probably the lowest paid. 9 bucks...YUP...9. Why? Because technically I am not the manager. Our manager quit and the AM did too. I should have when they did."

I was going to ask the community what does happen if someone like our submitter quits, but I suspect that I already know the answer: one of those flex people or a integral part of another studio would be picked to take over in her/his place.

I'm not sure how SPS plans to survive if they're working managers 6 and 7 days a week until they quit. But perhaps SPS isn't planning on surviving and is just holding out as long as their current plans dictate.

Final Jeopardy

As all of us know first hand, you're always made to feel like your job is on the line over at SPS and that is your primary form of fun-work-environment motivation. I received an email from an employee who asked a question that I'm not able to answer but that I thought that we might be able to tackle as a community. Her it goes:

"I am a current SPS employee who has, for the previous 6 years, poured my heart and soul into my studio. Since acquiring a new DM about 2 years ago, I feel I am being set up for termination. My studio is getting a "visit" late this week from our lovely DM! I think there are a couple of scenarios that could happen this week...

1: I am fired.....which is the best option at this point.
2: I am demoted.
3: He pretends like everything is fine and we all keep moving on in the so called fun company like nothing is happening.

My question is...If he does try to demote me, is there anything I can legally do to say, "No thanks"? Honestly, I would rather be fired than demoted. I will not take the demotion. I have worked too hard to have someone else try to run MY studio! I don't want to ruin my chances of receiving unemployment by "quitting". Any help for me? Any legal advice?"

Now I don't know much about this situation (I was someone who put in my 2 weeks notice once things at my studio started to get even worse and, talking to past employees now, I'm glad that I did), but it seems like to me if they say "We are demoting you," then they are effectively saying "take a demotion or get let go" which, if you choose to get let go in that sense, it seems like (since it wasn't for your own misconduct) you could collect unemployment.

But I'm not sure which is why I'm tossing it to the community.

Sometimes parents can't control their children. Sometimes the parents are children themselves

An email submission with the subject "Sexual Harassment??"
"The reason behind the question marks, is because I'm not sure if you could call it that at all, considering it happens from our CHILD customers!!!! They grope and grab us and their parents just giggle. Not to mention the Fathers staring at our "Goodies" and it sometimes being caught on camera.

Just this past week i was shooting a family of 6, the children being 4 Boys. The second to the oldest was about 10yrs old. I was trying to pose them and this particular boy just kept reaching up and "Honking" (for lack of a better word to describe his gesture) my breast. I looked at him and he got the biggest Cheshire smile on his face.... i thought he wouldn't do it again, but i was wrong. I turned back to keep posing them and he continued to do it over and over and over again, i just kept swatting his hand away.

Another incident was with a fellow employee. I'm unsure of the age of the child, but it was a little boy and he was continuously grabbing her rear-end...for the entire visit at our studio.

As far as the fathers, ugh. On more than one occasion Ive had comments made about my breasts and Ive also caught them in pictures staring at them...in a photo with their children and wife they are obviously STARING at my chest. How can i tell?! If i have them in a floor pose and I'm squeaking a duck to get the kids to smile, i pull the Duck UP towards the camera...when Mom and the kids eyes are UP but Dads are DOWN and in my direction, we can only assume what he is looking at!"

Let's do some math

I know that this is math that we've done before, but with all that we've been talking about how hard it is to find a job, I wanted to revisit this discussion:

Let's say that you work 30 hours a week making 11.50 an hour. That means that before taxes, you bring in $345/wk. Let's imagine that you're looking to make the exact same amount of money working somewhere else. If you find somewhere that is able to give you 40 hours per week, you would only need to make $8.63 per hour. I know sometimes that it seems it's hard to find a job that gives you what you get at SPS in terms of pay, but in the end, you can take a pretty substantial pay cut and make out pretty well (and work 5 days a week).

Plus getting your sanity back is the best paycheck around.

I thought it was bad when they bought the $9.99 plus composite

People used to get around missing out getting all their poses by getting the 9.99 package and then getting a 9-image composite of all of their other poses and scanning it on their computer. An email submitter informs us of another thing that people are up to:

"We all have the cute kid/irritating mom that has 2-3 outfits and then gets the 4.99 or 9.99 package. We recently had one and played dumb and made a few comments to get her on our side and whooaaa: Out comes the truth.

After a session, she goes online right clicks to save to her computer and sends to CVS online and prints wallets, 3x5s and even 5x7s. I call home office they say there is nothing they can do: CVS should ask for the copyright. The problem is though is that the computer doesn't know what that is when you submit online have it mailed to you! not to mention the client who you bend over backwards for those cute belly/maternity pics who only buys 2 sheets then you see a facebook/myspaces and they went saved pictures from online to the computer to then post online."

As one commenter writes, I don't know why they don't just have the online uploading process automatically watermark the image.