How I Learned To Leave Tro­mav­ille and Find My Own Sanity…

In Feb­ru­ary of this year, I sent an e-mail to my then-boss Lloyd Kauf­man, and it began with the fol­low­ing sentence:

I feel as though my time with Troma may be com­ing to an end.

It was one of the hard­est things I've ever writ­ten or said, for that mat­ter but it was a feel­ing that remained just as true through­out the remain­der of my tenure with the com­pany as it was on the day I wrote it.

After five very long years with the com­pany and with peo­ple who I care for very dearly, eight months after the writ­ing of that e-mail, I resigned. No fan­fare, no regrets.

Well, one regret, I suppose.

The orig­i­nal plan was for me to steer the ship that is Tro­maDance, this year the way I wanted things done, with Poul­trygeist pro­ducer and Tro­mite Kiel as co-director with me. I was really look­ing for­ward to this, and regret that I will no longer be attend­ing, but some­times you need to quit while you're ahead, and some­times you need to get out before you get any fur­ther behind.

For me, leav­ing Troma was a bit of both. By the time I wrote that e-mail in Feb­ru­ary, I had amassed a hefty amount of respon­si­bil­i­ties for Troma, includ­ing main­te­nance and cod­ing for the new online store (which I built from the ground up) and updates for almost every web­site in the Troma fam­ily nine alto­gether. This sort of work­load is one that with any nor­mal com­pany would prob­a­bly be split among two or three peo­ple, but in the world that is Tro­mav­ille, noth­ing is nor­mal includ­ing my level of sanity.

Through­out much of my time with Troma, I was not paid for my work. I signed an agree­ment in April, 2000 which guar­an­teed pay­ment through per­cent­age points on mer­chan­dise for as long as I stayed with the com­pany. To date, I have not received one check with respect to this agree­ment, and that was just the begin­ning. And many times, when I asked for com­pen­sa­tion, I was told, "I'm sorry, we just don't have the money."

But I per­se­vered, and for the most part, I didn't com­plain, because I enjoyed what I was doing and the oppor­tu­ni­ties afforded me by work­ing for the com­pany. And then, ear­lier this year, after the depar­ture of a co-worker, I was asked to take over the remain­ing web work until a suit­able replace­ment could be found and dis­cussed to make sure that their abil­i­ties would com­pli­ment my work and ulti­mately, make things eas­ier to work with for everyone.

This, as with many things in Tro­mav­ille, did not occur as planned. I finally was paid on a reg­u­lar basis, but in my opin­ion, the pay­ment, while appre­ci­ated, was cer­tainly not pro­por­tional to the amount of work I was doing, and the time that work required. On the other hand, work­ing full time at TMO at the same time was also wear­ing on me so much to the point that I cut out all non-essential com­puter time (writ­ing, cod­ing my own projects) to work solely on Troma stuff, most nites until two or three a.m. and then get­ting back up at 8:30 to head to the day job. I couldn't func­tion well this way, but I con­tin­ued … until November.

At that time, a per­son who was billed to me as a "suit­able replace­ment" was found, and with­out any lead time to train them on the ins and outs of my work or of the server, I was kicked back down to "con­sul­tant" sta­tus with a not­i­ca­ble (read: very) drop in pay, and a "thanks for your 'help', but can you train this per­son now?"

Not only did my replace­ment not have any (as in none, zip) expe­ri­ence with the pro­gram­ming lan­guages I had used to cre­ate the exist­ing web­sites, they didn't even know raw HTML! Come on, are you fuck­ing kid­ding me? I gave the per­son at the office in charge of find­ing the new per­son a spe­cific set of skills this new per­son would need to pos­sess and it seems as if they took that list and went and found the per­son that fit­ted those things the least.

I could have taken the salary par­ing, I was used to the belit­tle­ment of time and tal­ent, I was used to think­ing about the bot­tom dol­lar and the greater good all of these things I could have and would have taken with a grain of salt, but this, this, I could not stand. The final show­ing of a lack of respect and appre­ci­a­tion for the work I've done and the sac­ri­fice I've made for this com­pany of the peo­ple who run it was, sadly, the final straw. I thought about things for a few days, and I made my decision.

I've grown tired of the work­load, of the hypocrisy, of the empty promises. It was time for a change.

As I sit here now, less than twenty-four hours remain in 2005, and this is per­haps the biggest change that's occurred in my life in the past 365 days. I do not regret my deci­sion to leave Troma, nor do I regret my expe­ri­ences while work­ing for them, but enough is enough. In con­tin­u­ing to learn about myself and make things bet­ter, I have aimed to rec­og­nize when to count my bless­ings … and when to count my losses. As I said, my leav­ing this com­pany is a bit of both. On one hand, I will never get back the time or the energy I spent doing my best work for them, and on the other, what I do have is the expe­ri­ences I've had, the places I've been, and the peo­ple I've met as keep­sakes, moments in time that I will think of fondly, no mat­ter how the whole thing ended.

And as 2005 winds down, I'm think­ing of the things I will be able to do again, the time I'll have to do them, and the san­ity I'll save by doing them. I've spent much of the past five years doing for oth­ers, and now it's time to do for myself again. Fotog is a good start, more things will come. For the first time in quite a long time, I'm think­ing of these things, know­ing that I will do them, instead of just hop­ing I get the chance.

A dear, dear friend said this to me in Feb­ru­ary, and it makes even more sense now than it did then:

I dis­tinctly remem­ber a Chris who was involved in local the­atre and was mak­ing moves toward work­ing on a film of his own. Where'd he go? Can he come back? I liked him, and what he stood for, and some­times I think he's got­ten lost amid build­ing online stores and orches­trat­ing fes­ti­val vol­un­teers and help­ing Lloyd pur­sue HIS windmills.

Well, folks, I'm finally get­ting some force behind my wind­mill again. Here's to it. To those I value and cher­ish ah, hell even to the ones that I don't, have a won­der­ful and pros­per­ous new year. Start­ing in 2006, the power is back.