Congratulations, LOA Not Approved

Stephanie is on set in New York, playing a prosecutor, phone hidden under a pile of fake files, waiting between takes to find out if HR approved her leave of absence.

They did not.

What follows is a masterclass in in-between-takes crisis management - a denial email with a non-compete clause, a coach being frantically texted from a phone, a full catastrophizing spiral that ends at Denny's, and a very clear line in the sand.

This is the story of the moment Corporate made the decision for her.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:32 Phone Under the Files
• 01:10 They Did Not
• 02:05 The Non-Compete
• 03:18 Do You Understand What an Actor Does?
• 04:22 The Worst Case Scenario
• 05:44 Dead in a Ditch
• 06:12 You Can Always Get a Job at Denny's
• 07:05 The Line in the Sand
• 08:20 Until Next Time

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, I'm Stephanie Arapian, and this is the Centered Creator Podcast. I tell stories from my creative life, my travels, my many questionable decisions, and what I've learned about being human along the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

This one's about the moment corporate said no to my leave of absence. And the between takes spiraled had made it very clear what I was willing to give up for my career. I am on set at a prosecution table with some fake files in front of me. And while the camera is rolling, my phone is hidden underneath the files, and I am waiting in between takes for a cut so that I can check my phone and see if HR has proved my leave of absence. They did not. And now I was on set trying to figure out oh my god, do I have to quit my job now? Did I just quit? What is oh my god, what what do I do next? In between takes. Uh I was soliciting a whole bunch of opinions and thoughts, and oh my god, what do I do? At the same time, I was handling it better than I ever had before, but this was a brand new level of problem for me. I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in life. Some people, one person who did, actually come on set, worked that first week, and decided, yeah, this job isn't for me. Uh I already knew this job was for me, that this was my hard line in the sand. I am doing this job. So what is it gonna cost me to do this job? Do I have to give up my hotel bar job? It had been a source of income and security and health insurance and allowed me to live the life that I had enjoyed up until this point, and was, I'm gonna not gonna lie, it was a nice safety blanket for me to have. But now I was getting this reply that said, not only non-compete clause they were invoking, I don't quite understand how a hotel bartender needs to have a non-compete with acting. Like I understood if I was a sales agent and I was taking a leave of absence and told them I'm gonna go work as a salesperson over somewhere else. I get that. That makes total sense to me. But I am an actor and I don't really compete as a hotel bartender with an acting job. I also knew that they had the people to try and make the coverage work. I hadn't tried to do a leave of absence before, so I was learning all these things about how corporate really only sees you as a body instead of a person. I also was told in that denial email that I hadn't given them enough notice. They needed four weeks to give me a leave of absence approval. And I'm like, Do you understand what an actor does? And the answer was they don't care. The corporation didn't care. And they don't have any reason to care because there's always somebody waiting in the wings to take over the job, honestly. Now, the people that I worked with, the email started off with, Congratulations on booking this really awesome job for yourself. We're really excited for you. However, you have failed to put in proper notice of four weeks, and we can't allow you to work while you're obviously on a leave of absence to do another job. And the non-compute there was just like, I I do you want to understand what I'm trying to do here? And that forced me to confront a lot of questions. What was I willing to give up to do this acting job? What was the cost? Do I have to quit? What do I do next? Where is this going? And what really helped was actually going to the worst case scenario and frantically reaching out to my coach and mentor between takes and trying to do this on your phone because of course you're better at typing on a laptop and a computer than you are on a phone. I'm trying to compose the reply email to HR, figuring out if there's any wiggle room here. The tone was congratulations, LOA not approved. There was no leeway. There was, it was kind of shocking to me that there was no alternative or suggestion of, okay, what can we do to solve this? There wasn't any of that. And that was, I don't know, I guess I was a little hurt by that actually. Because I had given many years to this job. A lot of years. Like we're over a decade in. And so I was getting advice about how to deal with this. You can respond with a is there an alternative? So I was composing a wonderful email with lovely PRHR speak expressing my loyalty to the company, and I would be very sad to leave it. And is there any way that we can work something out? And then also looking at what is the worst case scenario here. If I have to quit, what would be the next job? Because this is gig work. We all know actors and a lot of creatives, and a lot of people work in gig jobs, and they're never guaranteed. They last as long as they last, and it's great while they last, and then what's the next thing? I'm jobless, like catastrophizing. My brain's gonna go there anyway, so I might as well. I could lose my job, then I don't have any money, and then I lose insurance, and then I have to lose my apartment, and then I am going to be homeless because I have nowhere to live, and then I'm gonna be dead in a ditch. Yeah. And then when I spiraled into that, yeah, that's not really gonna happen, Stephanie. No, that's not really where your life is going. You're smart enough that you can survive. You know what? You can always get a job at Denny's. Somebody's always hiring. Will it be fun? Hell no. But you're smart enough, you've got enough life experience that you will land on your feet. I am also fortunate enough that I have family that could take me in. I would not want to impose on them for great periods of time, but I was already staying with my sister during this New York job. I could just stay there. I could apply for jobs in New York. I have, again, over 10 years of experience in my current job, so that would translate really well to finding a new job. Uh, I could choose something completely different. I could go and be a reader, I could write. I was thinking of all these things that I could do. A worst case scenario, I again am fortunate in that my mom has a spare bedroom and I could stay with here. Again, would I love that? No. Would I like to spend time with her without the pressure of needing to? Yes. But I was catastrophizing and getting to the worst case and realizing that was totally unrealistic, and then starting to brainstorm how I would survive. And suddenly it wasn't so scary. It was like, okay, this will be a big change, but you can do this. You've made bigger changes before. This is doable. And it was really clear from the outset, I was drawing a line. There was no question. And I love this scenario for making this super clear to me. There was no scenario in which I was going to quit this acting job to go back to my hotel bartending job. Like that was ludicrous to me. Absolutely ridiculous. This is what I want. I'm leveling up. The universe is giving it to me. I'm gonna say yes and let the pieces fall into place. So eventually, over the course of that weekend, we were able to work out a scenario where I ended up flying back like almost every week to work two days at the bar and then fly out to New York, work two days on set, have a day off, and then do it all over again by flying back to LA. And I did that for several weeks, and they were able to approve the last couple of weeks of filming as a vacation. But I actually look back on this now and I'm really grateful for this scenario because it showcased so clearly to me that and that corporate job, I was a number. It would had no allowance. There was no space for me to grow and be myself while hanging on to that. I couldn't hang on to that job and continue the trajectory where I knew I was going. And it finally opened up my brain to be like, all right. And I looked at the worst case scenario and it didn't frighten me anymore.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Until next time, take care.