WORKING AS A SUBTITLER FREE

But this is never acknowledged and the self-denial gives rise to flawed recruitment. Since the early 2000s when I joined, subtitling has become a factory. The fundamental problem is mistaken identity. If you’re thinking of joining, then please consider my thoughts before applying. I’ve spent much time in the aftermath reflecting on this departure and have come to, for me at least, a definitive conclusion that made sense of my experience there. I was a manager in this office years ago and left when I couldn’t tolerate any more.

WORKING AS A SUBTITLER FREE

But the best thing about it has been to free myself from the toxic management culture of favouritism and inequality at Red Bee Media, which has enabled me to let go of resentment and frustration. I have since found another job, and not having to work shifts and have a normal routine, with weekends all to myself, is a revelation. Since recently leaving the company, my mental health has significantly improved. This job is therefore perhaps best suited to introverts or people who are happy spending a lot of time alone. It feels lonely and isolating working at Christmas and weekends.

Due to the fact you also have to work weekends, evenings and public holidays, the work-life balance is poor and my personal relationships have suffered as a result. This coupled with the lonely nature of the job all had a negative impact on my mental well-being. I developed sleep problems due to the extreme working hours - starting at 6am one week, finishing at midnight the next - and also gained a lot of weight because of irregular meal times. Shift working is tough and takes a toll on your physical and mental well-being. The way they’re managing it at the moment they’ll probably end up running the company to the ground, which is a shame because the Access Services department provides a valuable and important service to the deaf and hard of hearing community. If the Senior Team Leaders were able to manage the subtitling department better they would be able to address this so that less overtime would have to be paid out. There is so much work to do that thousands of pounds has to be paid in overtime each day to handle the workload meanwhile you have a minority of people not doing any actual work. But ultimately Red Bee Media will lose out. This just shows weak and incompetent leadership and unfairly burdens most people with hard work while a minority are seemingly able to coast along and do as little work as they please. But whatever their reasons, it seems to me that the Senior Team Leaders want to take all the perks a senior leadership role brings - better pay, no shifts and regular office hours - but are unable to tackle the harder aspects that such a role requires - the job of actually managing people and ensuring the workplace is a fair place to work for everyone. I just have to make assumptions on what I see - I don’t know the real reasons. Why the Team Leaders allow these people to coast along and put in as little work as possible is unclear - maybe they’re friends with them so they are protecting them, or maybe they’re scared of confrontation. Everyone is able to see what work you pick up too so it’s not hard to spot who these people are. The Senior Team Leaders, who have an overview of everyone’s work and are responsible in making sure everyone pulls their weight, seem to be incapable or unwilling to tackle this problem. While most people are hard-working and conscientious, there are a minority of people who select only the easiest work to fill their day with - almost exclusively repeats of old programmes on UK TV, which require very little effort or actual work. People are responsible for allocating work to themselves and inevitably that leads to some people abusing the system.

The system of allocating work is messy and chaotic. However, because there actually aren’t enough subtitlers to handle the large volumes of work, Red Bee Media is still able to find tens of thousands of pounds extra a month to pay existing staff to work overtime. There haven’t been any pay rises this year, even though the cost of living has continued to go up, so everyone has effectively taken a pay cut.

This means that new starters are constantly leaving - fed up of being overworked and underpaid - and are having to be replaced, while the older subtitlers seem to never leave - they’re too old and settled to look for a new job. You end up with newer subtitlers paid too little for what they’re expected to do and older subtitlers paid too much for what they do. Pay rises happen very rarely too, so new starters will be paid far less than others who started on better contracts for doing exactly the same job. New starters are offered a comparatively low salary to subtitlers on older contracts.

Working as a subtitler