I was thinking of skipping my new semester enrollment tomorrow. For a stupid shoot.

This particular teen magazine called me up for a shoot with K company.

One year ago, this particular K cosmetic company held sorta a pageant, in which I was one of the winners.

So this teen mag called up the winner, 1st runner and 2nd runner to do a commercial brochure shoot, sort of as K company’s ambassadors (basically telling how great the products are and how we like them so much, yadda yadda…).


“So we’ll see you Thursday at our office’s studio. You know the place right.”
“Yeah. How long is it gonna take?”
“It’s from 9am to 6pm.”
“Wow. *sweats* Erm. What bout the pay?”
“Oh. We don’t pay but we’ll give out some K products as a token of appreciation.”

Double You Tea Eff.

Whoa? You expect me to merrily do a whole day shoot then jump around in sheer bliss because like, wow, look, I get an eyeshadow and a lipstick which color only can be seen on Marilyn Manson lips and hooray?


“Thank you for calling. I’ll think about it.”

So I called Hishiko, another winner of the said pageant. She was obviously unhappy about the arrangement too but she sort of agreed to do the shoot already. So I said I’ll deal with this and quote for a price as long as she is willing to back me up.

Cuz I don’t think they can freaking do the shoot without two of the winners. It would be such a shame.

And she agreed.

I couldn’t get through the office so I dropped the person in charged a message.


“Dear Ms XXX, I’m to inform you that both Hishiko and I, in fact, have classes on the actual shoot day. We reckon we should at least get paid if we are obliged to skip class. Yours cheesily, Ringo.”

I didn’t lie ok. Enrollment is even more important than a lecture. I freaking don’t wanna be kicked out from college. And I was trying not to sound too blackmailish. lol.

And check out her reply.


“I’m afraid I don’t because it’s company policy to pay only pro models. If you can’t skip class I will call the other girls. No worries. We’ve already arranged the goody bags.”

-_-”

Bummer.

WHAT KIND OF FUCKING COMPANY POLICY IS THAT?

Your magazine is international and don’t tell me your company can’t even afford to pay two local models for a one day shoot?!?

You expect us to do FREE commercial shoot?! Like, waking up early in the morning, traveling all the way to your office (FYI, Hishiko stays in Setapak! As if she can use an eyeshadow to pay for petrol and toll. -.-), spending a whole day posing for you and all we get is some bloody goodies? Hey, not like your F products are damn high class ok.

Why should we freaking do free shoot and let your company earn money from our faces? I might as well go do charity?! At least the stray dogs wag their tails and orphans know how to smile back at me.

Come on, go shoot shit instead. It’s free. But I’m afraid the dog will bark at you too unless you use your own shit.

And note how she uses “I” instead of “we”.

I don’t know if the said mag and K company conspired to exploit us pathetic no-name models. But it is possible that K company could have paid the mag quite a sum for advertising and they decided to keep it all to buy magnum and give us some expiring make up stuff instead.

How nice.

So I got the message back to Hishiko. She was damn pissed too. She told me she is possibly not doing it because she doesn’t want to say “oh I did it for free” when people ask how much she gets paid for the commercial.

You go girl.

We’ll just let them find their so called free model losers. This is definitely not worth sacrificing our beauty sleep and time and energy and money.

Let me emphasize.

RINGO TAN AND HISHIKO DO NOT DO FREE COMMERCIAL.

Go find someone else who does. Duh.

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