As I've touched on before in a previous post, while every effort is usually made to be on set and ready to work at your call time, you technically aren't "in" (read: "on the clock") yet if crew parking is a van ride away. Instead, your call time is what time you're supposed to be at crew parking. So if the callsheet says your call time is 10:30am and crew parking is a twelve minute drive away from set, you technically shouldn't be working until 10:42am, even if you're already at the truck because you got there early (usually because of the lure of breakfast).
Best Boys and Gaffers who understand and actually enforce that rule are few and far between, so when I find a department head that insists on it, I want to give them a big ol' hug.
But what I don't get are colleagues that start working despite our Gaffer telling us not to.
One guy on our crew in particular was adamant starting work "at call" no matter what, and when one guy starts working and everyone else is just standing around, it doesn't make our department look good, even if that one person is going rogue. So one day, as Mr. Company Man started to unload carts from the truck before our official working time, I reminded him that we still had a few minutes until we were "in."
Since this wasn't a new discussion on this show, he sighed before turning to me, and said, "That's a stupid rule."
I stared at him blankly in return. "Do you want to work for free?"
"What? Hell no," was his immediate response.
"Then stop working before call."
It's as simple as that, people. If you're working before you're paid to work, you're working for free. It's not a hard concept to grasp.
I personally haven't worked for free since I stopped answering job ads that promised "copy, credit and meals," and I refuse to go backwards.
