by Karyn Bosnak
But since I wouldn’t actually start getting that new salary until June, and wasn’t getting any salary during the two months in between, I had to charge a few things. And since the new Discover Card I got was still maxed out, that just left my American Express card—until I got another Visa and another MasterCard. So I used those until they were filled up and then had to reinstate the Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan again to offset my Amex payments until I could actually afford to pay the money back. But since I wasn’t working, it was pretty easy to do because I had all the time in the world. All I did was shop, shop, shop—day in and day out. My doormen actually started to make fun of me for coming and going with so many shopping bags. Edson was the worst. Sometimes after shopping, I would wait around the corner for him to get off of work just to avoid the teasing.
The closer I got to starting work, the more I saw my career path in front of me. I would be a producer for a few years and then I’d become a senior producer, and then supervising producer, and then executive producer. And by that time, I’d be making so much money that any money I owed to Discover or American Express or any other cards for that matter would seem like mere pennies, or so I thought….
EIGHT
GRAND DEBT TALLY $24,938.00
TEAM ANANDA
The staff for The Ananda Lewis Show, including myself, started work the first week in June. The week prior to that Naomi, my sugar mama, came into town for work and we had one last slumber party at the W Tuscany before I was off to the races. It was my last hurrah. For my first day, I chose to wear a gray Banana Republic suit with a lovely pair of DKNY black strappy heels. As I headed out the door, I grabbed my Gucci purse and took one last look in the mirror. I looked so professional!
The offices for the show were in the King World building—in the same space where the Curtis Court offices had been. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I’d survive. The studio, however, was in the CBS building, which I was very excited about! It was the same place where they taped the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and 60 Minutes. I knew there were no cute guys in the King World building, and now I had a whole new building of male possibilities to explore.
The whole first week was an orientation of sorts that took place in a conference room at CBS. Everyone gave presentations, from the sales team to human resources. We learned what kind of show The Ananda Lewis Show was going to be, which was a fun, fresh daytime show that was geared toward women. The Ananda Lewis Show was going to be different from the other daytime talk shows. It was going to be better.
After all the speeches and presentations, everyone introduced themselves to each other. I was happy to discover that the staff wasn’t made up of the usual talk show junkies who seemed to move from show to show. Everyone had a different background. Some people came from news, others came from morning shows. It was very diverse. Everyone brought something unique to the table.
On the boss front, there was Mary, my boss from Curtis Court, who was the senior executive producer of the show, and Jose, the executive producer. There was also a woman named Alexandra, who was the supervising producer, and another named Elise, the coordinating producer. It went like this: Mary, Jose, Alexandra, Elise—Mary was in charge of the big picture, Jose was in charge of the show, Alexandra was more hands-on and dealt with the producers, and Elise was in charge of the technical stuff.
In addition to me, a few other Curtis Court people were also hired, including the senior producer, Jodi, who was heading up a department called Futures. The idea behind the Futures department was that they would book shows that took more than a week to produce. They were like an advance team. It seemed like a great staff and a great setup.
Toward the end of the orientation week, everyone finally got to meet Ananda. While we all sat in a stuffy conference room in suits, she showed up in a purple hippie skirt with her two Chihuahuas in a bag. It was funny. She told us all about herself and where she was from. She grew up in San Diego, went to Howard University, and after that hosted a show on BET called Teen Summit. From there she went on to become a VJ for MTV. She had won awards, and had even interviewed Hillary Clinton. She was smart, she was young, but most of all, she was refreshing.
Ananda was my age, and I felt like I could identify with her. As much as she was about to embark on a new journey, so was I. And I couldn’t help but think that maybe we had some of the same self-doubt running through our veins. Fear of the unknown, so to speak.
By Friday we were finally out of orientation and in our offices—I mean cubes. Yep, cubes again. And I got to sit one whole cube away from where my last one was. That day each producer was assigned a team, which consisted of one associate producer and one production associate. My team consisted of a girl named Molly, who was my AP, and a guy named Mike, who was our PA.
Each day that first week I wore a new suit and carried my Gucci purse. I felt together. I felt on top of things. And I was excited that I was going to work on a show that was going to make a difference. I wanted to make feel-good TV, and I felt like I was at the right place to do that.
To the outside world, and even to me at the time, everything looked great. But ever so slowly, things started to crumble. In a few short months, my whole world would be turned upside down.
THE PACE PICKED UP pretty quickly during the second week. Our “in time” was moved to 8:00 A.M., so we could get ready for a news meeting that was held at 8:30 A.M. Not being a morning person, this was not the easiest thing. So each morning I counted on an Iced Venti Americano from Starbucks to give me the jump start I needed. With four shots of espresso, it seemed to do the trick.
That Tuesday, each producing team was assigned their first show. Mine was called “A Teen Girl’s Guide to Style.” It was a big hodgepodge of stuff relating to finding your own fashion style, like shopping at thrift stores and Be-Dazzling your own clothes. It wasn’t exactly a life-changing kind of show, but it was definitely fun.
After coming up with a plan of action, my team and I began booking our show. While Molly and Mike were going to start finding the girls, I was going to work on the Be-Dazzler guy. I had always wanted a Be-Dazzler and was excited at the possibility of getting my very own.
For the next few days my team and I worked hard. The Be-Dazzler guy was a cinch to book, but we didn’t seem to be having the same luck with the teen girls. When most shows produce shows like this one, they rely on “carts” or fan mail to pull the guests from. Carts are like advertisements for guests that you see during shows—a “If you are a so-and-so and would be interested in being on the show, then call us at this number” kind of thing. But since the show was new, we didn’t have any of those, so we had to find everyone by just being resourceful.
Basically, we were looking for teen girls who dressed like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who needed help with finding their own style. And we needed them to have mothers who were sick of spending a lot of money on new clothes, and were worried that their kids were confused slaves to fashion lacking their own identity. Our bosses didn’t want it to be a “my teen dresses too sexy” type of show, but more of “please help my teen daughter find her own style” type of show. We needed a very specific type of girl with a very specific type of mother.
So for the past week, my team had spent almost every day roaming shopping malls and combing through TRL groupies in Times Square to find guests. And it never failed that once we found the perfect girl, she had a mother who wasn’t concerned about how she dressed. Or once we found the perfect mother, she had a daughter who dressed conservatively and was in no way a slave to fashion. By the end of the week, we had about a hundred girls—but not one of them was good enough. It was proving to be a very difficult type of show to book without carts.
But the following week, we kept at it. Day after day we continued to look for the perfect guests, and day after day they never showed up. My show, which was supposed to be a hodgepodge of fashion, was quickly turning into a hodgepodge of a mess.
THE
“LOST” CHECKBOOK
By now it was the end of June, and I had been working for over three weeks. And as much as I tried to concentrate on booking Britney Spears wannabes, I began to freak out about my finances a bit, which were beginning to unravel at the seams. You could say that at the moment I was a bit “cash poor.” All of the money that I spent over the two months before Ananda wasn’t money at all—it was credit. I did have some cash, but I used it to pay rent for April and May. I hadn’t yet paid June. Well, I did pay it but I stopped payment on my check.
You see, one day at the end of last month after balancing my checkbook, I mailed off my June rent check and all of my bills. Electric, phone, credit cards—you name it. But soon after I dropped them in the mailbox, I realized that I had made a huge error, and that I didn’t have enough money to cover all the checks I’d written. So I had to do something or some major check bouncing was going to happen.
So after thinking about it for a while, I decided to stop payment on my rent check. I had enough in my account to cover all my bills, just not enough to cover all my bills and my rent. And one $25 stop-payment fee was a heck of a lot less than eight $30 insufficient funds fees. So it seemed like the only logical thing to do. I figured that by the time my landlord got the check back marked “stop payment” I would have enough money and would be able to pay it. And I’d just make up some lame excuse to tell them like “I lost my checkbook and I had to stop payment on a bunch of checks” or something. I figured it would look better to my landlord if I stopped payment on the check myself rather than having the bank tell them that I didn’t have any money to cover it.
But things didn’t go exactly as planned. Things had become kind of crazy at work. I would get there every day at eight, and wouldn’t get home sometimes until nine. I was exhausted. And it seemed that the more exhausted I became, the more money I spent. After a long day, I’d be too tired to wait for the bus, so I’d take a cab home, which cost $7 a night. And then the next morning I’d be too tired to get out of bed, so I’d push snooze until absolutely the last minute. Then I’d have to rush to get ready and would take another cab back to work to get there on time, which cost another $7. And of course I wouldn’t have any time to make breakfast at home, so I’d get some coffee and a muffin at Starbucks, which ran around $5.
Then during the day, I’d be too busy to go out and get lunch, so I’d order in and spend another $15. And in the afternoon when that “lull” hit, I’d spend $5 on some more Starbucks and gummi bears to bring my energy back. And I never made dinner. I’d pick it up on the way home or order in. And that always cost around $15 too.
I was into convenience. It didn’t matter if something cost more; if it was more convenient then I did it. I didn’t do it at the time, but after adding it all up, I realized that I was spending about $54 a day on this crap. And I didn’t just work five days a week—I was working the weekends too. So all this money was just flying out the door—over $350 a week.
I received my first paycheck on June 21, and had planned to use it to pay my June rent. But after a few days when I checked online to make sure it had cleared, I realized that I still didn’t have enough money to pay my rent. All because I was being frivolous. I was just burning through my cash.
The next payday was July 5, and by that date another month’s rent would be due again. And to make matters worse, my rent had increased to $1,950 a month. On top of that, every day when I got home I received another bill in the mail, asking for another monthly payment. So here it was, June 27—my show wasn’t coming together, I owed $3,900 to my landlord, and I had a huge pile of bills that I couldn’t pay sitting at home on my table. Just then my phone rang.
“Ananda Lewis Show,” I said, slurring all the words together. Try saying it fast five times. It’s kind of like a tongue twister.
“Hi. Karyn?” a woman asked.
“Yes?” I answered, thinking it was a show guest.
“This is the bookkeeper from your landlord’s office.” Ugh. It was the dreaded phone call. “Um, we have a check here that you wrote for June’s rent that came back from the bank with a letter saying that you stopped payment on it,” she said. She sounded concerned.
“Oh gosh!” I said, trying to sound overwhelmed. “You’ll never believe it, but I lost my checkbook and had to stop payment on a few checks. I totally forgot to call and tell you.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “I knew there must be a reason. Because no one just stops payment on their rent check,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I’m so sorry. It totally sucks! I had to stop payment on all sorts of checks. I’ll put another one in the mail to you today,” I said. “I totally meant to call you, but I forgot.”
“Well, okay then,” she said. “As long as you mail another one today.”
“Absolutely,” I said. I wasn’t exactly going to mail it today, but the mail was always so screwed up that I doubted they would know the difference. This was my third infraction with the realty company.
As I hung up the phone, I looked at a calendar. As I looked at the weeks laid out before me, I saw that after the check on July 5, I would get my next one on July 18, and the one after that on August 1. I could use the ones on July 5 and 18 to get caught up with my rent, but doing that meant not paying any of my bills until August 1. But on August 1, I’d owe my landlord another $1,950—so I couldn’t use that one to pay my bills either. The check after that would come on August 15. Fueled by a panicked work environment, a cycle had started that I was afraid was about to spin too far out of control. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to catch up. Just then the phone rang again.
“Ananda Lewis Show,” I said, slurring all the words together again.
“Can I please speak to Ms. Bosnak?” a woman asked.
“This is,” I said.
“Hi, Ms. Bosnak, this is American Express,” she said. Oh crap. “I’m calling to find out when you plan on making payment to your account.”
“Um,” I said. “How much is my monthly payment?” I asked, meaning “How much do you think I owe you because I’m enrolled in the brilliant “Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan.”
“Well, your total balance is over ten thousand dollars,” she said.
“Yeah, but how much do I owe you right now?” I asked. As she said her next words, I realized it: I had been so busy working that I’d forgotton to do the whole Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan thing for June’s bill.
“You owe over ten thousand dollars right now,” she repeated. The words just echoed in my head like she’d said them in slow motion or something. $10,000, $10,000, $10,000….
“Ten thousand dollars?” I asked. “Are you sure it’s not like I only owe one thousand this month and nine thousand next month?”
“No. You owe ten thousand today. Right now. All at once,” she said rudely, and then added, “Your account has been frozen too because you are over your limit.”
“Huh,” I said, thinking about the amount. $10,000, $10,000, $10,000…. Frozen, frozen, frozen…. “Um, I’m gonna have to give you a call back.”
“When do you plan on paying it?” she asked. She was persistent.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” I said again and then hung up.
I leaned back in my chair and started to freak out. How stupid could I have been!? How did I just forget to buy and return $10,000 worth of stuff!? There was no way I would be able to come up with $10,000 to pay American Express. But instead of trying to figure out what I was going to do, I decided to get back to work. Because if I messed up and got fired or something, then I’d be really screwed.
Being a producer there’s always that feeling that you are only as good as your last show. The term “job security” doesn’t always apply. So far in my career I had been lucky, and my bosses always really seemed to like me. But I was embarking on something different here, and needed to make sure that they were confident that I could do my job. I needed to make sure that they trusted me. So I
needed my first show to be great. I felt that if for any reason they thought it was bad, then I’d be out the door.
So every day for the rest of that week, I threw myself into my job. American Express continued to call, but thankfully they either got my voice mail or I convinced them that I was someone else, and Karyn was unavailable at the moment. In all my craziness I completely blew off my first weekend in Fire Island—a weekend for which I had already paid.
NINE
GRAND DEBT TALLY $25,185.00
RAZZLE BEDAZZLE ’EM
The next Tuesday, I finally mailed my June rent check and prayed to God that it wouldn’t clear until I got paid on Thursday, which was July 5. Unlike last year, I was actually happy to work the day after the holiday. In order to avoid my bank’s whole “five-day-check-clear” rule, I planned on taking my paycheck directly to the bank that it was drawn from to cash it, and then planned on depositing that cash into my checking account.
As much as I needed to focus on my bills—especially American Express—my primary concern was my show, which was scheduled to tape in one week. By now we had our guests for the show locked in, but I wasn’t completely convinced they would be good. I was very worried. The more I worked that week, the more I began to realize that I didn’t really like my new job that much. I knew it would be hard work, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard.
Because I was a new producer, I thought maybe my producing skills were to blame for the chaos in my show, but as I looked around the office, I realized that every producer seemed to be having the same problems that I was. Sometimes with a launch, things go smoothly, and sometimes they don’t. And things definitely weren’t going smoothly at The Ananda Lewis Show. It’s hard for me to say exactly what the problem was. Because if I knew, or if anyone knew, for that matter, then we would have fixed it and things would have gotten better. Everyone on the staff seemed to be overworked and overstressed. We were all wiped out, and the show hadn’t even aired yet.