The TIFU means "today I f'd up"
TIFU by posting a pic to reddit and destroying my career Obligatory "this happened several months ago." For the past 20 years, basically right out of college, I worked in closed captioning and subtitling. This involves transcribing television programs and movies and timing the transcription to sync to the video. It's a lot of typing and even more watching a bizarrely varied amount of TV and film. I worked for several companies around the country. What started as a "just for now" job grew into a career, I became production director in a few organizations, and I became one of the fastest captioners in the country. When my company in New York City shut down, I found myself in possession of a very expensive piece of captioning software and a fair amount of clients, so I began working freelance. The clients began to dwindle as more and more work started going overseas, but I was working steadily based on one Huge Client that had robust Netflix, HBO, and Hulu contracts, and the rates they paid were ridiculously large. If you ever watched Chicago PD or Ray Donovan with the subtitles turned on, that was me. For the first time in my life, I was able to put money away for retirement, travel to Europe, go out to eat without checking my balance, never worry about the bank account running dry, all while working maybe 4 hours a day out of my bedroom walk-in closet. It was a magnificent few years. One day, I am captioning a Disney Channel cartoon that I had never seen before, and in one scene, a child is hanging his doodles in an art gallery. One of the doodles is of Trogdor the Burninator of Homestar Runner fame. "He lives on!" I think, and then, being a hopeless reddit addict, I post a screenshot to the Homestar sub and forget all about it. Fast forward three months when I get an email from Huge Client investigating a "very serious matter" in which a screenshot of a cartoon had been posted to reddit. Turns out, the cartoon had never aired before. Turns out, Disney was pissed. Turns out, the list of suspects that had access to the video was very short. I took immediate responsibility and profusely apologized, but the damage had been done. I had boneheadedly violated every nondisclosure and employee contract I'd signed with them by posting that single screenshot, and they terminated all future dealings with me, voided the $6,000 in invoices I had outstanding, and stated in very polite terms that I was lucky Disney wasn't suing my pasty white ass. After the fallout settled, I had no steady income. A few commercials and YouTube broadcasts that needed subtitles, but nothing reliable, and NYC rent drains bank accounts quickly. I reached out to every other captioning outfit in the country, but no luck. So, that left me at 40 with a staggeringly narrow and largely obsolete skill set forced to start over from square one. I am currently working for the Postal Service doing blue-collar work in 90-degree heat and mourning the days when watching TV in my jammies till 3 PM was my job. All gone because of a reddit post of a forgettable cartoon that only got a measly 150 updoots. TLDR: I violated the terms of an absurdly kushy job by posting to reddit, and now I deliver packages. https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/97a8in/tifu_by_posting_a_pic_to_reddit_and_destroying_my/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
