The "Fatima's next job" PR disaster & fiasco

Hi there guys, even if you're not in the UK you must have heard about the PR disaster of the century that is "Fatima's next job" - essentially, a British government programme CyberFirst sent out a photo of a ballerina with the caption "Fatima's next job could be in cyber. She just doesn't know it yet." The context for this is that millions of people in the UK are currently unemployed because theatres, cinemas and other entertainment venues are currently shut because of Covid-19 and if you're a ballet dancer, well you're in trouble because there's no work. Even if you are allowed to get back into the dance studio to train, it is going to be very difficult for venues to sell tickets to the next performance of Swan Lake because venues have to enforce social distancing in the audience and that means selling far fewer tickets whilst deliberately spacing the audience out - under such circumstances, most venues find it virtually impossible to make any kind of profit and thus have opted not to reopen until further notice. As a consequence, ballet dancers are out of work and so the government has a choice to either such performers a living wage to enable them to keep training until a time when entertainment venues can open again under pre-pandemic conditions or they can say, "forget ballet, it's time for a career change." They claim that the "Rethink. Reskill. Reboot" was a long term campaign to get more young people into IT rather than a response to Covid-19. This poster went down really badly on social media and it sparked a whole range of memes which placed top government officials in the ad because this government has been woefully incompetent in the handling of this Covid-19 pandemic, like seriously - Boris Johnson our PM has been such a total fucking idiot whose incompetence has led to us having one of our highest Covid death rates in the world. So the public has done the very British thing and attacked the government using their own ad campaign and needless to say, this is a classic PR disaster.

Now I have been approached by my readers for my response to this story because I have been an actor in the past but work in corporate finance today. Am I doing a Fatima - did I give up my acting career to retrain in order to enter the world of banking? Actually, my story is far more complex than that! So here's my story: I have always been interested in becoming an actor since I was a child - I did plenty of acting in school as a student and even managed to get paid work as an actor as a child in Singapore on TV. That's the key difference between a lot of actors who just do it for fun (ie. as a hobby, it is an unpaid leisure activity) and those who are professionals (ie. they get paid to perform) - I managed to do both as a child in Singapore. I suppose for me, there's always a choice between doing an activity for fun and doing it as a career for money - let's look at another activity I really enjoy: gymnastics. I was a former national champion gymnast and I am actually a fully qualified gymnastics coach; thus there is the option to either simply enjoy gymnastics as a leisure activity as an adult, or to make it my career by working for a gymnastics club, by becoming a gymnastics coach. I decided to simply enjoy it as an leisure activity rather than try to make money from it because very few gymnastics coach actually earn a lot of money - most are struggling to get by and they are never in the sport for the money; they do it for the love of the sport. I feel that earning good money in finance whilst still enjoying the sport as a leisure activity is a far better compromise. Thus that's why I thought I could do the same with acting - I realized it was an incredibly hard way to make a living, that the chances of finding success is pretty low, so that's why despite the fact that I really adored the idea of being an actor: it was super fun, it was so glamorous, it was exciting, I always felt it wasn't a practical choice of career. 

Allow me to discuss the different shapes of the hierarchy in different industries: in some industries, you're looking at a pyramid - so allow me to use a simple analogy of a car factory. So you have the assembly line workers who are the lowest paid and in the middle of the pyramid, you have the managers who are making sure that the assembly line workers are doing their jobs properly - they are paid more because their duties may include training the most junior staff. Then at the top of the pyramid are the highest paid of them all, the directors in management, responsible for the entire business. Some assembly line workers may eventually get promoted into middle-level management after many years, but very few of them will eventually make it into management. Hence that creates a pyramid shaped structure where there are very few extremely well paid jobs at the very top of the pyramid, a limited number of well paid jobs in the middle and plenty of quite lowly paid jobs at the very bottom. Showbiz however does not follow this kind of pyramid structure, instead the household object that most resembles what we observe in showbiz is the pin cushion. So for those of you not familiar with it, a pin cushion is a little device that we use in sewing whereby with stick our needles and pins in there when we're not using them, it is a safe way to store these long, sharp, pointy objects. My friend Gerald did a West End musical here in London some years back with Dannii Minogue (sister of Kylie Minogue) who is a fairly famous singer/actress - it is quite common for these big shows to feature a celebrity as there are many people who would go see the show because they are big fans of this celebrity. Most of the cast and the crew were barely making about £350 to £400 a week whilst working on the show but Dannii Minogue was being paid an undisclosed 5-figure sum a week and she made more in a month than what my friend made in a year. That is the pin cushion model: big stars like Dannii Minogue are on top of the pin that extends way up from the cushion, whilst people like Gerald were on the cushion itself. 

The assembly-line worker in the car factory may not have a particular fun or interesting job, but at least his chances of getting promoted to become a line manager is pretty high if he sticks to his job and works hard at the factory for many years. Conversely, Gerald had a good time working on that West End musical - singing and dancing on stage every night for a living sounds like a pretty fun way to make a living compared to working very long hours in the car factory. However, his odds of getting 'promoted' are low because of a few problems associated with showbiz: firstly, there are very few well-paid jobs in showbiz compared to the poorly paid jobs - someone like Gerald can work his butt-off, trying his best, attending every acting, dancing and singing class there is out there and still not get the big roles. Whereas the odds of the assembly-line worker getting promoted to line manager is actually quite a lot higher than Gerald's chances of landing a big part. And let's say Gerald gets lucky and lands a big part in a film - that simply means that he gets some well paid work whilst shooting that film for a few weeks, then what? Just because he lands one big role doesn't mean he has magically made it and he will keep getting big roles from then one. In the music business, there is the famous term "one hit wonder" describing singers who have had one massive hit but failed to find any success after that despite trying desperately hard. Whereas one your assembly-line worker gets promoted to line manager, he is guaranteed a better pay package with that promotion - so whether he is loyal to his employers or decides to go work for another car factory as a line manager, he now commands a higher pay that reflects that promotion. So employees of that car factory are guaranteed a pay check at the end of the month whilst actors go from gig to gig, having a lot more fun but completely sacrificing any concept of financial security in an industry which is fickle - where success is fleeting and hard to sustain. 

 This is why many people who go into showbiz have very rich parents - basically if none of it works out, that's okay, daddy and mummy are still very rich and can support them. Whereas for poorer working class kids, they simply don't have that luxury - even if they don't have to support their own parents, they still have bills to pay. That's why a lot of working class people are less keen to go into showbiz once they are confronted with a grim reality of how difficult it is to make a living in this industry and would opt for something a lot more stable and less glamorous - such as working in a car factory. I certainly don't have rich parents who could support me and as an immigrant here in the UK, I suppose there was a point I wanted to make to my friends and family back home in Singapore: I didn't want to be seen as a failure, as someone who came to the UK only to end up desperately poor by picking a career path that was extremely difficult. To be honest, if I am trying to make myself sound rational then that is a misrepresentation of the situation - let's go back to that fateful night I made the decision to become an actor back in October 2004. I had a reasonably well paid office job then but I was seriously unhappy where I was - the money was rather good but I felt I wasn't getting anywhere and I didn't get along well with the people at work, I didn't like the management either. So one Sunday night, the thought about going into work the next morning was so depressing that I couldn't sleep at all - so suddenly it hit me in the middle of the night as I was staring at the ceiling: I knew what I had to do, I had to resign and become an actor the very next day, just like that. I did exactly that and thankfully, I had friends who are actors so they told me how to get started in the industry like how to get an agent. Was that a rational decision? No, it was a highly emotional, irrational decision but yes it was the right decision. 

After a few years of trying to make things work in showbiz, I realized that it was virtually impossible to make ends meet in showbiz - that was when I returned to finance on a part time basis. Having already worked in finance in the past and with plenty of relevant, useful skills to offer, I was able to find part time work in banking pretty easily. I saw first hand how many actors struggled for years - there was nothing romantic about being a poor, struggling actor. I had a friend in his 50s who didn't have more than a few hundred pounds to his name - he still lived in a shared, rental apartment that was tiny and filthy. That's the very grim reality of most actors on the 'cushion' rather than on the top of the pin in the 'pin cushion' pay structure. I did go for loads of auditions over the years, I did get some very good parts, I did work with famous celebrities, I did have a lot of fun traveling around the world for some amazing shoots and I have done far more than most actors ever managed to do - I even managed to earn quite a lot of money from a number of high profile jobs that I did but at the end of the day, the most frustrating part of the industry is the 'gig' nature. Unless you get cast in a major role in a long-running soap opera, you're not going to have a regular job as an actor. Alternatively, the number of actors who become so successful and famous that they will always be in demand is pretty darn low - that's the equivalent of working your way to the top of that pin on the pin cushion. Let's try this experiment: let's take a famous movie like the last James Bond film Spectre  - only the A list actors, musicians, directors and producers are going to be paid so much money that they don't have to worry about money for quite a while whilst the rest of the cast & crew would be paid a decent daily wage but once their services are no longer needed, it is, "goodbye, good luck, here's your final paycheck." So even if you are an actor who lands a part in that movie, unless you're a celebrity on the top of that pin, your financial situation is still rather precarious. But then just how famous must you be before you have some job security as an actor? 

A recent example of just how brutal the industry can be is the story of Katie Jarvis - she was once a very popular actress who landed herself a very big role on one of the long running soap operas on BBC called Eastenders. In fact she has enjoyed plenty of success since 2009 when she was the protagonist in the film Fish Tank at the age of just 18 - the film won several awards and was a commercial success; this propelled Jarvis into instant stardom, leading up to her stint of 108 episodes on Eastenders. However, after she left Eastenders, the acting work just dried up for some reason and in order to make ends meet to feed her family, she was forced to take the job of a security guard at a store called B&M which describes itself as a 'variety retailer' - there are no B&M stores in central London as they are priced out of central London but when I visit other parts of the country, it is always fun to have a wonder around a B&M as they are a bargain basement type store where you can find super cheap stuff. So if you do get your friend a birthday present from B&M, you make sure you remove the packaging and never reveal where you actually bought it because it sends out the message, "yeah I had to get you a gift, but I didn't wanna spend a lot of money on you, so I went to B&M to buy this for you only because you bought me something for my birthday and I feel obliged to give you something in return." It would be bad enough for a filthy rich A-list celebrity to be photographed shopping in a B&M store given the negative image the store has for being so cheap and tacky, so imagine how social media reacted when someone recognized Jarvis working as a security guard there. The way she was humiliated on social media for taking such a job was needlessly harsh and cruel. One moment Jarvis was on the top of the pin being treated like a star at the BBC, the next moment she is working a minimum wage job at the local B&M store - that's how fickle and cruel this industry can be even to Jarvis whom you would have thought has achieved a significant level of fame, enough to at least sustain her acting career in the long run.

Perhaps I didn't want to roll the dice and bet on my talent turning me into an A-list celebrity, perhaps I lacked the self-confidence but I thought it was far easier to make a living in banking to become a millionaire (which for the record, happened in my 30s) than to try to do that in showbiz - remember my poor actor friend in his 50s still living in that shared apartment? Yeah, I didn't want to end up like him. Even if you do end up on the top of the pin, way above the pin cushion - it is only temporary, for the during for the project (the film, the TV programme etc) you're working on and then after that, you're back on the cushion. So contrary to the narrative that the 'Fatima' poster suggested, I crossed over from finance to showbiz before returning to finance. I suppose it is a question of what one wants out of life: what do you value more? The joy and thrill of doing what you love most or having financial stability which would then in turn, give you the money to spend on the nice things in life you like and enjoy? There is no right or wrong answer to this choice - this is something each individual has to decide for themselves. And it's not like I have closed the door entirely on acting - I've still got an agent who still sends me auditions every now and then, though that has been severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic this year as expected of course. There's a part of me that likes to know that there is still a tiny possibility that I may once again get yet another big part in a film or TV programme in the future but what I will definitely rule out is doing acting for 'fun' in unpaid, amateur productions. Having done proper acting with famous directors and A-list celebrities, I think the experience of doing it in a low-budget amateur production would just be frustrating - it's gotten to the point where I either want to do it properly or I don't want to do it at all. After all, doing low-budget productions is what actors do at the beginning of their careers when they are desperate to build a CV; yes I have been there, done that, paid my dues. 

For those of you who have not acted professionally before, allow me to use an analogy to make that easier to understand. When I was a young adult, I didn't have a lot of money so whenever I went traveling, I stayed in youth hostels and got by spending very little money. It was the only way I could afford to travel back then. Today, I'm a lot richer and older - the thought of staying in a youth hostel, sharing a room with ten other people is simply mortifying to me now, even though that's exactly what I did when I went to New York in the late 1990s. I was willing to put up with those terrible conditions then as I couldn't afford a nice hotel - I suppose putting up with those horrific youth hostels was part of the experience of traveling back then. Oh I have done some crazy things when I was much younger like backpacking my way across Sri Lanka only using public transport. It is easy to put up with that kind of hardship if you've never ever had a taste of luxury travel. Those were some incredible adventures and I have some amazing stories from that trip to share with you - but do I want to do that again at my age? No thank you. Likewise, many actors, singers, dancers, performers etc have done their share of terrible jobs with low-budget productions which they have probably not even gotten paid for - performers do that in the early stages of their careers simply to get the experience, to network and expand their contacts in the industry. And indeed, I have done my fair share of those and I look back at those experiences in the same way I remember those backpacking experiences I have had when I was younger. Once you've had a taste of luxury travel, it is quite hard to go back to backpacking on a shoestring. Likewise, once you've been treated like an A-list celebrity by the crew, it is hard to go back to working on these no-budget amateur projects. Therefore if I can't land substantially big roles as an actor on professional productions then I would rather just focus my time and energy on my banking career instead. 

But to be fair, I have to point out that I am extremely lucky: it has been the same skills that made me successful in acting has also made me successful in banking. Since I work in sales, it takes the same kind of skills to deliver a convincing and confident sales pitch as it does to get on stage and deliver your lines to the audience in a theater. Of course, the script I have is a lot more boring but I am still drawing upon the same set of skills at the end of the day. This is why making this transition back and forth between showbiz and banking has been relatively easy for me - but going back to that photo featuring Fatima, the person who came up with the concept of the photo made a really stupid mistake. When you want to make a transition from one career to another, you look for transferable skills that will enable you to hit the ground running or at least make that transition a little less traumatic. The kinds of skills it takes to be a professional ballet dancer and the kinds of skill it takes to have a career in IT are totally different - I'm not saying it is an impossible transition but I'm pointing out that it is not an easy transition. If you're looking for more people to enter the IT - the local dance studio wouldn't be the obvious place to look. Instead you'll start looking at places where people are already expressing an interest in IT such as coding clubs for teenagers. If you're looking for an alternative career for dancers who are now out of work because of Covid-19, I would look at the skills they already have and try to find a role that they can transition into a lot more easily such as teaching. Standing in front of a class may not be as fun as performing at the Royal Albert Hall, but oh how I wish some of my teachers had a flair in performing so as to make the lessons I've had back at school a lot more interesting. Thus trying to get a ballerina to retrain for a career in IT isn't an obvious choice when it comes to utilizing transferable skills to make an easy transition to another career - that's why the concept of 'Fatima' is very flawed.

Furthermore, this poster was extremely offensive to people who have chosen to pursue a career in the arts. I've already pointed out how painfully difficult a career in the arts can be with the "pin cushion" shaped structure - the people who work in the creative arts are fully aware of these job hazards yet they are so extremely passionate about what they do that they are willing to accept those risks and pursue a career that they truly love. Hence trying to persuade a ballerina to retrain in IT, I just wanna shake my head and say to the person who designed to poster, "have you ever met a real dancer before? How much research did you do? Did you even talk to any dancers when coming up with the concept of this ad?" Having worked with professional dancers before, well I hate to generalize but I can tell you two things: firstly, they're doing what they do because they are super passionate about their career choice. Secondly, they really don't like being told that they are barking up the wrong tree and should be retraining for a completely different career. Allow me to use the upcoming American elections as an analogy to put this in perspective: most of the campaigning so far by both sides has focused on targeting undecided voters and those who are politically apathetic (that means they usually are not interested enough to even bother registering to vote, let alone turn up to cast their vote). The Democrats know that they simply can't convert hardcore Trump supporters and vice versa: that's why they are both targeting the middle ground instead. By the same token, targeting 'Fatima' the ballerina to work in IT would be the equivalent of a Republican trying to persuade the most hardcore left-wing supporters that Trump is an excellent president and exactly what America needs right now. So even if that conversation did take place, the chances of that Republican convincing the Democrat to vote for Trump is effectively zero. It's never gonna happen - so that is why this poster is simply ludicrous because the person who came up with it has obviously never met a dancer in real life, never mind even try to understand a dancer's mindset. 

But allow me to bring this back down to earth - I know a professional dancer from gymnastics, let's call him Julian (not his real name, obviously). He has trained in some of the most prestigious dance schools in America and has done everything from ballet to musical theatre professionally. I met Julian recently and asked him how work was going - it was a gloomy picture. So Julian has had no work as a dancer since the outbreak of Covid-19 and has taken odd jobs to make ends meet, "whatever I can get my hands on, so for example, last week a neighbour was moving house so he paid me £60 to work the whole day helping him pack the contents of his house and move, it's not a lot of money but I had nothing else so I took the work. I had gone from being financially secure as a dancer to being quite desperately, struggling - not knowing how much money I would have in the bank by the end of next week." I asked him if he would consider retrain for a career in another field like IT, he thought about it and said, "when I made the decision to become a dancer, I didn't want to make a plan B because that's all I wanted to do. All I want to do is to get back to dancing again when all this is over - so whatever I have to do right now is just temporary, it is just to make ends meet and pay the bills. It may be another six months, it may be another year or longer, nobody knows. But I have no plans to leave dancing whilst I know I still have the ability to perform. I have a friend Lydia who was also a dancer, she had a bad fall and damaged her left foot - that ended her career as a dancer as her foot never fully recovered. She then knew she had no choice but to pick another career path, so she retrained and became chef - one of her other passions is cooking, so she is now working in a French restaurant in West London. Is this career her first choice? No, she wants to dance and even though she now earns more than me, she is jealous that I can still dance because that means so much more to her than money - this is our passion. If I suffered a very serious injury like Lydia then I would retrain but until then, until that day comes, I have no intention to." 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic - what do you think? Have you seen some of the many memes mocking the government, based on this Fatima's next career poster? Have you ever to switch career paths and how difficult was it to adopt to a brand new environment? Have you met people like Julian who are determined to do whatever it takes to keep on dancing despite having no work under the current circumstances? If Fatima were to leave ballet the same way Lydia had to, what jobs would be more suitable for former ballerinas? Why is this current British government so out of touch with the real world and why do they keep fucking up? Do leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.