Career Oops'es

[MatthewShiner]

Wanted to share a couple of career move oops'es I have either done . . . or have run across . . .

1) A friend of mine emailed me a notice of a show he had written - I emailed, jokingly to him . . . "Who do I have to f*** to get on this show?" - yep, responded to all . . . a virtual who's who of commercial theater got it (I played it off well, and got some positive feedback about showing enthusiasm as a stage manager).

2) Had an assistant apply for a job that conflicted with the current job they were working on with me . . . and used me as a reference without telling me they were looking for other work.  Made the reference awkward . . . to say the least.

3) Send out a cover letter without changing the name of the theater company from the last cover letter I sent out.  Sad really.


What other mistakes have you made and recovered from . . .

[kellyaksm]

I sent out a rehearsal report and at the top of the report I put in a reminder that we would be having photo call that week on Wednesday Aug. 28, however I meant to type Wednesday Aug. 27. The next day I woke up to about a dozen emails from the head of the department, the publicity department, TD, and several others asking why the photo call changed and that they were annoyed that it was pushed back etc.
I immediately sent out a correction to everyone on the production team apologizing for any confusion that had come up because of my typo. Then I sent individual emails to the people that had privately messaged me about the change. Lastly, since I see most of those people around the department I made a point to stop by each person's office and apologize.

While I realize that I made a careless mistake that I shouldn't have made I was a little surprised that people thought that the date of the call had been changed. It was still on Wednesday I just typed the wrong date. Only one of my professors even realized that I had still typed the right day of the week (just the wrong date).

[EzBrEzPSM]

Got the list of dancers we were offering contracts to, from the Artistic Director, sent them all their offers. Sent the rest of those who auditioned the, "sorry we do not have a contract to offer you" email. The AD however did not inform me that he was still in talks with 2 or 3 of those people that I sent the "sorry" email to... we even ended up hiring one of them in the end, and trust me he reminds me all the time, "Hey do you remember that time you told me I didn't have a job..." Oops!

[dallas10086]

Trying *too* hard to stand out in a cover letter to a major production company, based on the style of the job posting. I'm not going to give examples of what I wrote, I still cringe when I think about it.

[SMMeade]

Trying *too* hard to stand out in a cover letter to a major production company, based on the style of the job posting. I'm not going to give examples of what I wrote, I still cringe when I think about it.

This is related to mine. I sent a cover letter to a company I really wanted to work for detailing qualities that matched me perfectly to their upcoming show- one of them was that I was interested in learning about a PAing on an Off-Broadway one-man show, because I was SMing a one woman showcase in the fall.
The large-scale show was not a one-man show, and to this day, I don't know how I got that impression.

[dallas10086]

3) Send out a cover letter without changing the name of the theater company from the last cover letter I sent out.  Sad really.

I feel like we've all done this at one point!