Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak

  The day before the show, Ed and I started to work on the script and ended up pulling an all-nighter. As in I got home from work at six in the morning, changed my clothes and was back at work by eight all-nighter. It was obviously not by choice, but we hadn’t taped such a high-production show yet and had to make sure everything was set so it would run smoothly.

  Now let me tell you, it’s a sad day in New York when a cute, single producer such as myself doesn’t have time to take a shower or even sleep the night before fifteen hot, young bachelors were on her show. But that’s what happened. Yep, poor ole Karyn didn’t look too cute that day. But despite my lackluster appearance, the show ran relatively smoothly, and that’s really what was important. And at the end of the day I packed up and went home to get a good night’s sleep.

  Since David and Ed had come on board, most of the shows were running pretty smoothly. Work seemed to be getting back to normal until anthrax showed up at CBS, and once again tapings were halted. November sweeps were just around the corner, and all the canceled tapings really began to take their toll.

  It was then that the big snafu happened. Just like my Curtis Court contract, my Ananda contract was broken up into option periods. Everyone’s contract on the staff was drawn up that way. The current option period expired on November 30, and King World needed to let each person know whether they were going to pick up their next option thirty days prior to that expiration date, which was by October 31.

  But since David had only been executive producer of the show for two weeks and had really only gotten to see each producer work on just one show, King World didn’t think it was fair to him or to us to make him decide whose options he was going to renew by that date. So once again they asked us to sign an extension, which would give them two more weeks to “judge” whether they wanted to keep us.

  They didn’t make a big announcement about the extensions or anything. Our production executive just started calling each employee into her office one by one to explain what was going on. But word got around, and everyone knew what was happening.

  Finally, on Thursday of that week, it was my turn to be called into her office. After she explained the situation, my understanding was this: I could sign the extension and give King World two more weeks to decide if they liked me and wanted to keep me. Two more weeks of working until midnight, possibly pulling all-nighters. Two more weeks of working my ass off to produce shows for November sweeps. And if those shows didn’t run so smoothly, after all that they could still tell me “no thanks.” I kind of felt like this option was a “dazzle me for two weeks to prove that you are worth keeping” option. Or I could not sign the extension, in which case King World would have to honor my initial contract and let me know by October 31 whether or not they wanted to keep me.

  I felt like I had already proven myself to this show, and was pretty sure that David and Ed liked me, but you can never really be sure. Television is a very fickle business.

  So I had a choice to make, to sign or not to sign. The expected thing for me to do would be to sign because I have always been a go-with-the-flow type of girl. And everyone else was signing it, so why shouldn’t I? But when I opened my mouth to tell her my decision, those words didn’t come out.

  “I’m not going to sign it,” I said to the production executive. What? I don’t know why I said it. It just came out of my mouth. I didn’t even think about it.

  “Okay,” she replied.

  And with that I got up and left her office.

  Again, I don’t know why I decided not to sign it. I guess I felt like I had worked my butt off for the show during the past five months, and actually for the company for the past year and a half. I put my heart and soul into this job. And if they couldn’t show me the decency of giving me four weeks’ notice, like it was stated in my original contract, to let me know if I had a job come December, then I wouldn’t show them the decency of doing what they “considered” fair to David and fair to me. And let’s be honest, the extensions were really only for the benefit of them. How did I, or any employee, benefit from having two weeks’ notice as opposed to four to find work if they chose not to keep us? It gave them more time to decide. And since every employee knew they were deciding, they would work their butts off to produce the best shows they possibly could for November sweeps. Their livelihoods depended on it.

  Later that evening David called me into his office.

  “Hey, Karyn,” he said as I was sitting down.

  “Hi,” I said in my usual cheerful voice.

  “I heard that you didn’t sign the extension and was wondering why,” he said.

  “I just want to know sooner rather than later if you are going to pick up my option,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Are you not happy here?” he asked.

  “It hasn’t been easy, but I’m totally on board,” I said. “I think that you know that, and I just don’t want to feel like I have to prove it to you for two more weeks. In my initial contract, it says that you have to let me know thirty days in advance, which is by next Wednesday, and I just want to know by then.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said. He hesitated for a moment. “I just wanted to know. You have a great attitude, and I was kind of shocked when I saw that you were one of only three people who didn’t sign it. And I know the other two are not happy and don’t want to stay.”

  “Well, I want to make it work and you know that. I just would rather know sooner than later,” I said.

  “Okay, thanks,” he said. I think it only seemed fair.

  Before I knew it, it was Wednesday the thirty-first. Halloween. Option renewal day. Or Option nonrenewal day. I went to work, and worked away. And waited to see if I got a renewal letter. I figured if they didn’t want to keep me they would have probably said something to me by now. And since no one had, I expected that I’d get the letter. But by five o’clock, it still hadn’t come. Since I was sick of waiting, I decided to find David and ask where it was. But he was still in the studio taping a show, so I sought out the production executive and asked her.

  “You aren’t getting one,” she said. Huh?

  “You mean they decided not to pick up my option?” I asked.

  “King World made the decision to not pick up anyone’s option who didn’t sign the extension,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you. It was an across-the-board decision.”

  Since I didn’t sign the piece of paper they shoved in front of my face one day last week, I lost my job—it was as simple as that. I stared at her blankly for a few seconds and then went back to my desk. I didn’t really believe what had just happened.

  In a daze I packed up my stuff and left. If I did indeed lose my job, then there was no sense staying past six. By the time I got home, reality had set in and I started to cry. What the fuck was I going to do? I owed about $25,000 and I’d just lost my job. And ultimately it was my fault for not signing that stupid piece of paper. All of a sudden, I became really angry and started to feel really betrayed. I had worked for this stupid-ass company for a year and a half and devoted so much of my time to them, and I felt completely screwed over. So I picked up the phone to call David, knowing that he would be out of the studio by now. When I got him on the phone, I very calmly asked him what happened.

  “You didn’t pick up my option?” I asked. “I worked my fucking ass off for this stupid show since it started and you didn’t pick up my option.” I was calm. I really was. Okay, maybe not.

  “It was a King World decision and I had nothing to do with it,” he said.

  “So that’s it?” I asked. “You didn’t even fucking tell me? I had to go and ask someone?” (Using the “f” word helps me to get out my aggression.)

  “I told you that it wasn’t my decision, and I honestly didn’t even know that it was official,” he said.

  “What if the production executive wasn’t there to tell me? And I showed up tomorrow, and then next week, and the week after still thinking I had a fucking job? Huh? Was I just suppo
sed to guess that I was fired? Because usually when people are fired, David, someone tells them. They don’t have to fucking ask.” It really helps me get out my aggression.

  He was silent.

  “Whatever,” I said and hung up the phone. I was livid. I was fucking let go. Fuck!

  THE NEXT DAY I woke up and went to work. I didn’t even want to go and don’t know why I did. As soon as I sat down in my short-ass fucking cube, Ed called me into his office.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I told Ed the whole story of what happened and he listened intently and nodded exactly when he was supposed to, meaning that he understood what I was saying. Of course I cried, cuz I had been having a problem keeping those fucking tears in my eyes since I started working at this damn show. I told him that if I knew by not signing the piece of paper that I would lose my job, then I might have signed it.

  “Karyn,” Ed said to me with his big cartoonlike puppy eyes, “can I be honest?”

  “Please do,” I said.

  “Get the fuck out of this place. It’s a fucking disaster. It’s going to do nothing for your career. If you went into David’s office right now and asked, he’d probably take you back. He likes you. But I suggest you take this opportunity to get out of your contract. Move on. You hate it anyway.”

  He was right. I would be totally out of my contract at the end of the month, and could work wherever I wanted and do whatever I wanted to do. It was kind of a freeing feeling. So that was it. I did lose my job. But maybe it was for the better. I’d get another job. I had a month to do so, which was plenty of time. I wasn’t worried because I had never been without a job in my whole life. Never.

  Alexandra, the “CEO of your own life” boss, was one of the other two people who didn’t sign her extension either, so she was leaving as well.

  Anywho, I produced one more show about stepfamilies in crisis and realized then that I had made the correct decision. It was one of those “conflict shows” where everyone that was on the show hated each other, and I just despised working on it. The whole thing fell apart at the last minute too, but I didn’t care that much. I still left at six every day.

  I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, so I thought that somehow this fiasco must be part of a bigger plan. David and I made up, and I realized that it really wasn’t his decision to not pick up my option, and by my last day there, I kind of thanked him for it.

  I threw myself headfirst into a job search, and called everyone I knew looking for work. David even lined up a couple of interviews for me. The jobs didn’t pan out, but it was nice that he tried to help. I soon started to realize that the market wasn’t looking too good. Everywhere I called told me the same thing: budgets were being cut and they were on a hiring freeze. As my last day of work quickly approached, I began to worry that I might not be able to find a job as easily as I thought I could.

  I told Ananda about my leaving the show, and when she asked me why, I told her that I just wasn’t happy there. It was the truth. Contract fiasco or not—I had never been so miserable in my whole life.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know.” That was the truth also.

  Someone once told me, “When what you do makes you hate what you do, it’s time to get a new job.” And that was exactly what happened to me at Ananda. My experience at the show made me so miserable that I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to work in television again. I couldn’t figure out if it was the show that I hated or the career.

  On my last day of work, a bunch of people had a party at a bar to say good-bye to Alexandra, me and a couple other people who were leaving as well. After about an hour, Ananda showed up and gave me a going-away card. On the inside she wrote, “Good luck with?” She couldn’t have hit it more on the nose. Four months of “?” was exactly what was about to happen.

  ELEVEN

  GRAND DEBT TALLY $22,738.00

  THE UNEXPECTED ROOMMATE(S)

  I woke up Monday morning and just lay in bed for a while. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I didn’t see the point in rushing to take a shower. As I lay there in bed with Elvis sleeping on my pillow, I thought about my last two months in Brooklyn. I was happy to discover that I was adjusting relatively well to roommate life. However, I couldn’t say the same for Elvis. He did eventually come out of his hiding space in the closet, but Veda continued to harass him, and as a result he continued to repeatedly whack her in the head with his paw. His favorite place to seek refuge was on top of the kitchen table, which was just out of the little freak’s grasp. Sometimes when eating, Scott and I would find remnants of those tabletop visits in the form of cat hair and dirty paw prints. I wasn’t thrilled that he had been up there, seeing as he shat in a box of rocks on a daily basis, but what was I gonna do? The little bugger had to escape somewhere.

  Unlike myself, Scott was relatively normal. But he did have his little quirks, as we all do. For example, he was really into lighting. Our apartment, like a lot of New York apartments, came equipped with really ugly “boobie” lights on the ceiling. I’m not exactly sure what the correct name of that style of ceiling light is, but we called them boobie lights because they resembled big breasts. Scott insisted on removing them and replacing them with more appealing fixtures. He also put dimmers on all the switches in the apartment, because we all know how important good lighting can be.

  He was also really into cleaning, and more importantly straightening. If I cleaned a table or the floors, he’d clean them again even after I told him that I already did it. And I think an internal buzzer went off inside of him any time the placemats on the table became crooked. Even if they were just one centimeter out of whack, he would be over there straightening them up. I think it was one of his favorite pastimes. That same internal buzzer that went off with the placemats also went off when the ice cube bin in the freezer fell below a certain critical level. But when it did, he would be over there crackin’ trays and filling it back up so that it was just on the verge of overflowing.

  But as clean and meticulous as he was, there was one thing that I just couldn’t understand: he drank out of a big Brita machine in the fridge. Now, I’m not a tap water person myself. In fact I’ll admit that I’m a bottled water junkie. Evian bottles littered my desk at work, and jugs of the stuff filled the fridge as well. And sure I’ve been tempted to buy a Brita to save on all the plastic that I wasted, but have you ever looked closely inside one of those things? I know I’m not the only girl to notice all that crap that floats around. It’s yucky crap. It’s black crap. And people think that’s clean? No thanks.

  I eventually got up around 10 A.M. and made my way to the kitchen. The first thing I did was sit down to call the unemployment office. My bosses at King World told me that since I was in fact laid off, I could do this. After a short conversation with a woman at the New York State Department of Labor, I was set. I then decided to make some breakfast, but after opening the fridge and noticing its sparse contents, I decided to get dressed and go to Starbucks instead. I put on jeans and a sweater and headed out the door.

  I paid $5 for my usual Café Americano and a muffin, and then sat down and thought about my plan of action. I had called tons of places in the last month looking for work, and no one was hiring. Every single person I talked to told me to call back in January. So I kind of didn’t know what to do.

  My financial situation was this: I would be making $405 a week in unemployment, which came to $1,620 a month. My rent was $1,150 and my payment to CreditGUARD of America was $432, which left me just $38. But I also had a Discover Card payment of $150, a Jennifer Convertibles payment of $40, a gas, electric and phone bill that were each around $30, and a cell phone bill that was around $60. I thought about canceling the cell phone, but since I had a yearlong contract I would have been charged $250. I instead changed to the cheapest plan they had, which was $40. So after all those payments, I would be negative $282 a month before I e
ven bought food. I did however have about $1,500 saved, which would help pay that extra money, but I knew it wouldn’t last that long. I didn’t want to be out of work, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice. So I just sat there and drank my coffee.

  Later that night while Scott, Veda (who needed to be in the middle of whatever you were doing) and I were watching QVC, we heard a funny noise come from inside the wall. Since we’d moved in together, both Scott and I were delighted to discover that we had a mutual love for QVC. We’re not big orderers or anything, we just liked to watch the program. In our opinion, QVC is far superior to all of the other shopping networks by a long shot. First of all, they have a counter meter, so you can see how many people are getting in on the “fabulous offer” that you are watching. Second, they have a countdown clock that tells you how much time you have to get in on that “fabulous offer.” And third they take “call-ins”—just regular people like you and me who partook in that “fabulous offer” and purchased the product that you are learning about. With those three things combined, how can one not order?

  On that particular night, we were listening to Betty Sue tell us all how great her “Breezies” brand underwear were, and were excited at the fact that over two thousand people had ordered themselves some Breezies brand underwear too. And then it happened. With only a minute and a half left on the Breezies brand underwear countdown clock, we heard a funny scratching noise coming from inside one of the walls.

  Scratch Scratch Scratch!

  Even Veda turned her head away from the TV to figure out where it was coming from.