Do you like your job?

When I tell people that I work for a local television station their immediate response is "That must be fun?" I'm not sure if fun is the word I would use, don't get me wrong I do enjoy my job most times, especially on those days when we're shooting a commercial for a local lobster restaurant and we get to eat the props afterwards. And it is kind of enjoyable to drive a brand spanking new car down the interstate to show how fast it will go for a local car commercial. Like a lot of things in life those moments don't happen often and while there are fun parts of my job, there's also not so fun parts. Give last Thursday as an example. Without giving away this particular client, even though some of you locals may figure it out, we were shooting a a local car dealership. This car dealer insists on using Golden Retrievers for their commercials, and I'm not saying anything is wrong with this...it definitely works for them, also given the fact that those of you who probably figured out what car dealership I was talking about when I said Golden Retrievers. But anyway, we've done a lot of commercials with this client and we've made these dogs, and other creatures, do some pretty crazy stuff, like the time we got a dog to look like he was talking on the phone, by using peanut butter. And I'll never forget the time we pulled off getting the poor dog to walk on a treadmill and we never thought we'd be able to pull that one off, but we did. In fact it's those difficult ones that don't seem to take as long. But when we think we've got something easy, like getting a dog to sniff a car, it can take us hours. Thursday I was forced to go with 'good enough' when all we needed was to have 4 dogs sit together in a car with their heads sticking out the window. After going at this for 2 hours while having one dog play shy in the back and not want to even pick his head up, and one other dog insist on jumping out the window every 2 seconds, it started to rain and I know we had one shot that was doable, when I took the factor that it was only going to show for a matter of 1 SECOND, that's when I said 'Good Enough.' Which those who know me, know that I'm not known for Good Enough, but when you can feel people's eyes glaring at you praying that we got the shot, it's hard to say 'sorry, we've gotta try again.

So, yeah while my job can be fun, and although I don't really get paid 'big bucks' and I'd much rather be doing this job then being a stay at home mom, yeah that last one's a lie. I hope the next time you see a commercial with a dog in it, you'll take note how much time it may have took to get that particular shot.