Most exploited I ever was was when I worked for a non profit mom and pop theater company. Pay was $5/hr officially but I worked about twenty hours of unpaid overtime every week, so even if you include the hypothetical rent I saved living in the shared accommodation it came out to well below minimum wage for the time (this was 2012ish).
Everyone but me was pretty much sponsored by their parents to be there. I subsisted off of top ramen and mooched food for about six months before realizing that the economics simply were never going to make sense and cut my losses, leaving that job with more debt than I had when I started it.
I would be tempted to say that that's just the nature of the industry and that the people there were doing it for the love of the art form - but I also saw the homes that the owners and their son all lived in, so I'm not tempted to say that at all.
Most exploited I ever was was when I worked for a non profit mom and pop theater company. Pay was $5/hr officially but I worked about twenty hours of unpaid overtime every week, so even if you include the hypothetical rent I saved living in the shared accommodation it came out to well below minimum wage for the time (this was 2012ish).
Everyone but me was pretty much sponsored by their parents to be there. I subsisted off of top ramen and mooched food for about six months before realizing that the economics simply were never going to make sense and cut my losses, leaving that job with more debt than I had when I started it.
I would be tempted to say that that's just the nature of the industry and that the people there were doing it for the love of the art form - but I also saw the homes that the owners and their son all lived in, so I'm not tempted to say that at all.