How ironic that this thread would pop up today, the day after a "reunion" of sorts for me. Last night I attended a former coworker's engagement party and we were able to reunite with many of our former co-workers from the show we worked on last year, many of whom we hadn't seen or spoken with since the show's untimely cancellation.
I know what you guys mean. I've had at least three jobs in my life where I was there long enough and I got to know the people there long enough that I started to feel like it was very much a family dynamic. The first was the overall six years I worked at the university admissions office, going through the last years of my undergraduate degree as a student and then later as a state employee... I went through all kinds of good times (graduation, weddings, births) and bad times (September 11th, family deaths) with those people and to this day they are still very much family to me. When a certain girlfriend from out of town flew in to visit me, one of the first things we did was to come to campus to meet everyone.
That's how special those people were and are to me. They all used to get so irritated with me though, because I took pictures all the time while I was there. "Dammit,
doubleoh, quit with the photos!"
Then, years later (2008 or so) I uploaded all of them. All 3,000 of them, detailing the entire experience of working with these guys for six years -- on to Facebook, long after we'd all gone our separate ways, having moved to other cities, states and countries, having married or had children... and some even have died. But the minute those pictures uploaded, my inbox was flushed with comments, most of which read "OMG when did you take all these pictures?" and "Look how young we are!" and "Oh, man, good times!"
It is an everlasting comfort to me knowing that some of them are still working there today and that I can easily go home and stop by for a visit and see the old gang, those familiar faces in that office. Good times indeed.
The other two jobs were here in Hollywood, on two vastly different shows I worked on... the first was a reality show I spent most of 2008 working on and ironically enough was run by a man and his wife and his brother. They liked me. They promoted me. It was a great, great job and I will always think fondly of that show and the time I spent there and would work for them again in a heartbeat because they are quality people.
The other show was the one I mentioned above, and through which I met everyone I reunited with last night at the party. On top of all of this, I was fortunate enough to spend most of the time on this job working with one of my best friends. It was a sweet, sweet gig that show, and I miss it terribly. Sure, we had our moments and things didn't always go smoothly... but then no production ever does. But we had a great time on that show, got some great experience, and got to work with some really cool people who we had already looked up to before our first days on the job.
I won't deny that there are shitty jobs out there because I've worked plenty of them. But these last three I've explained were very important chapters in my life and the people I met at each --both the ones I liked and the ones I didn't-- all served to help me along the way. It's very comforting to know you have that family-away-from-your-family dynamic, especially during the lean years.
