Sunday

Copy Cats - Just Wrong!

Just starting to read a really good novel called ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD by CAROLINE ANGELL. So far, really good on many levels - dialogue, characterizations of moms, strategies with kids and more. The nanny is a composer and if you are musically oriented with voice or instruments there are many other descriptive depths.

The nanny/composer tells about an AWESOME professor she and her friends had where they created their hearts out for and with this academic authority creating wonderful music and themes etc all to emotional heights and all got A's. Yep you guessed it - after the semester ended the work they had done with the professor popped up everywhere - the nanny's contribution came on the theme song to a new dramatic tv series.

A nanny friend and I had that happen - we were between families and a new school opened up - not academic but creative - art, music and much more and the pay was good. We were invited to a meeting with the husband and wife whose sincerity reminded me of Sunday school teachers. We performed our little hearts out for them - songs, dances, plays, artwork, games, group activities, ways to deal with discipline, and much more.

Neither we nor any others interviewed got a position but we heard they used ALL our ideas!!! It was calculated! They specifically picked our experienced brains with no intention of hiring us.

Has this ever happened to anybody? And what steps do you take to prevent this?

More on this good book later

Leigh




Here is a little clip of Caroline Angell explaining her book!  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIgDcDlgd5U&authuser=0

2 comments:

Jess said...

I'm not sure if I understand. Your ideas were stolen for a book?

Leigh Raymer said...

no, sorry I did not explain it. Our ideas were stolen by a husband/wife team, owners of a recreational facility for kids. They put us thru our paces for hours getting us to tell them everything we knew how to do with kids, did not hire us but we found out later used our ideas.

In the book " All the Time In the World", the author relates a fascinating example of plagiarism using music.

Since that time my friends and I are very circumspect on some interviews - enthusiastic, yet vague