Why the Crew of Temptation Island Is the True Reality Show Participants [e72]
The guys end the week by discussing the harsh employment standards surrounding reality shows. They then answer the question, "My friend has a file with over 10,000 pieces of debt that he received from a collection agency that went under. What legal steps do I have to take to just be able to sit in my house and call these people up and have them send me money?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our Friday episode of Legally Sound Smart Business – once again, I’m telling you the name so you don’t forget – where we cover business in the news and answer some of the business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @askbizlaw and, also, you can now participate in our weekly AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit on various sub-Reddits. Just search for “Legally Sound Smart Business”. You should be able to find us and participate. MATT: If there’s anything this podcast is good for, it is repetition because the intro comes in before we talk, saying what the show is, and our names, and then we instantly say our names and the show multiple times. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: So, the first thirty seconds someone’s listened to this podcast, they should know who we are and what it is, hopefully. If not, then we’re just going to randomly shout it out during the middle of the show. NASIR: Well, I agree. I think we should play the intro just in the middle of the show just so people know what’s going on but you are against that. MATT: We do have a little sound break between the story and question but there’s no one speaking during that time. NASIR: Yeah, we just need someone saying, “You are listening to Legally Sound Smart Business with Matt Staub and Nasir Pasha.” MATT: Or some cool question of the day cut that we get someone to tell us. All right, I’m just going to get into the story. Going nowhere with this. NASIR: All right. MATT: So, I don’t really watch reality shows but I’m familiar with them. I’ve heard of Temptation Island. This story is about the real heroes of these reality shows – the crew that has to film. This is something I’ve always wondered, too. You’ll see all these crazy things and all this stuff but, as bad as it can get for the actual people on the show, it has to be ten times worse for the people filming it. This particular story with Temptation Island kind of evidences that. We’ll get into the legal side but I’ll give a little background. This person is saying, when they worked on the show, they worked in 90-plus degree heat for three weeks straight with no days off, “18-hour days and, every third night, I was required to pull an overnight shift. So, a 36-hour shift every third day.” I mean, there’s some issues with that, kind of – there definitely is – but they’re saying they were only paid $600 a week. They’re complaining about that. It breaks down to I guess $600 a week isn’t going to be enough if they’re working that many hours. I didn’t do the math in my head. It sounds like there’s some minimum wage issues just with all the overtime that they would be required to pay. NASIR: But these guys are in Belize, right? It doesn’t even matter. These guys aren’t protected by anything. That’s the problem. MATT: Oh, was this filmed out of the country? Yeah, that makes more sense then. NASIR: Yeah, that’s the issue. MATT: So, that was the financial issue. I guess they flew all the important people home first – the cast and all that – and then, I guess, a hurricane hit before the crew could fly back so they were stuck there for days. The summary of this is shows are really cheap with the actual crew and it’s pretty unfortunate for them but the problem is they can find other people to do it if these people that are complaining are going to continue to not want to do it. NASIR: Yeah, and I’m just reading some of these comments because t...