Lily: "I don't really love my job here. I mean, the roster is spotty, the pay really sucks, the people are all dropkicks- well, most of them...I'm probably gonna leave her as soon as I finish Uni anyway, like in three, maybe four-years."
Camera Man: "Um, actually everyone else is a college graduate."
Lily: "Wait, what? Then why are they still working here?"
Day Job is an Australian adult animated Mockumentary web series created by Paul Georghiou, Brooke Kymberley, Todor Manojlovic and Heather Riley. The series is funded and produced by ScreenAustralia and the (now defunct) ABCTV as part of a "Fresh Blood" initiative intended to help new, young talent from Australia to create their ideas.
The series follows the young staff of a dingy local bowling alley as their lives are documented by an on-set film crew during work hours. Among these staff members are: Rico (Georghiou), an abrasive Mean Boss desperately seeking a promotion from corporate; Lily (Kymberley), an apathetic university student; and Ivan (Georghiou), the resident layabout caught in the middle of both. Other staff members include assistant manager Hannah (Riley), and the contrasting pair of Rowley (Manojlovic) and Bradley (Georghiou).
Running as a 3 episode mini-series, it was released on January 26th, 2024. No word of future episodes have been confirmed. The show's Patreon can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/georghiou2D
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Tropes in Day Job:
- Ambiguous Ending: It's left vague whether Ivan and Lily truly leave the bowling alley at the end of Episode 3, or are just "practicing" for it by ditching work and refusing to clean the bowling alley following the riot. Though the series seems to imply the former.
- Author Avatar: Seemingly the case with Ivan, a college graduate who majored in film who feels trapped in a job he hates.
- Benevolent Boss: Compared to Rico, Hannah is much more accommodating and friendly.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the end, Rico doesn't get his promotion and the bowling alley is completely destroyed following a riot. But Ivan and Lily manage to seemingly get back together and potentially even leave their job for good in search of a better future, even if they're unsure what that future holds for them.
- Butt-Monkey: Ivan just can't seem to catch a break throughout the series. A good example is Episode 2, which centers around his disastrous house hunt.
- Freudian Excuse: Episode 3 expands on Rico's life considerably, noticeably showing his family to be completely unsupportive and emotionally abusive toward him. And after 8-years of working endlessly at his job, his request for a promotion is still denied, leaving him trapped in the same horrible position he had spent the series wanting to escape from.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: With that said, it's also made clear that regardless of how reasonable the explanation for how he got this way is that it still doesn't excuse his frankly horrible behavior. He's still an openly Mean Boss who has gone out of his way to make the lives of his workers miserable, including this very same episode where he forces Ivan and Lily to stay past closing to entirely clean the destroyed bowling alley by themselves while he leaves to go bowling, his only defense for which being to tell them to "do what they're told", showing he had learned nothing from his own mistakes and was fine pinning them onto someone else.
- George Jetson Job Security: Rico is mentioned to hire people off the streets then fire them without hesitation if they make even one mistake. This is stated to be the primary reason the bowling alley is so understaffed.
- The Ghost: The shift sheet in Episode 2 noticeably shows a worker named Missy on it. We never meet them in the series proper.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Rico will go off on anyone who so much as looks at him funny with little to no provocation, especially Ivan.
- Hate Sink: Rico, in spite of his reasons for being who he is now being sympathetic on the surface, is still an unkempt, wrathful waste of a man who gladly treats his employees like dirt while openly underpaying them.
- Karma Houdini: After three episodes straight of mistreating his employees, Rico gets off fairly light all things considered. Sure, he didn't get the promotion, but that's about it.
- Offscreen Karma: In a more meta sense, however, this might be the biggest form of karma possible. As in spite of all his work, Rico is still stuck as the boss of a dead-end job with nothing in the way of a promising future, destined to live out his days disappointed and angry at a life he won't have while all his employees eventually move on to better things.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Downplayed considering the Ambiguous Ending, but if taken literally as Ivan and Lily leaving their jobs in the dead of night in search of better things, that still means the bowling alley is completely wrecked, meaning Rico will no doubt force Hannah and the other workers to pick up where they left off and maybe even take on additional hours to make up for them being gone.
- Mean Boss: Rico checks all the bosses; needlessly loud and rude? Check. Will gladly fire an employee without hesitation? Check. Has zero respect for your time or space? Check.
- Naïve Newcomer: It's heavily implied Ivan's the newest hire at the bowling alley, getting signaled out as someone Rico "hired off the streets" in the first episode. As expected he's also the one who takes actually doing his job the least seriously.
- Only Sane Man: Hannah's the only person, Rico included, who seems to take her job seriously at all and actually act like a normal enough person.
- Perpetual Frowner: More often than not, Bradley has a permanent scowl on his face, even in the poster.
- Shipper on Deck: Hannah is openly supportive of Ivan and Lily's relationship. Even following their break-up, she has them work together during Episode 3 in hopes of them rekindling things.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Rowley and Bradley are noticeably largely absent from the more emotionally heavy and serious Episode 3.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: Downplayed though present in Episode 3, which emphasizes humanizing Rico and why he is the way he is after previously being a needless asshole throughout the prior episodes.
- Those Two Guys:
- Rowley and Bradley are never shown doing interviews apart. In each, Bradley will tend to open on a topic, Rowley will make a mistake, and Bradley will trample over the conversation. This is especially notable with Episode 3, as this is effectively their only screentime during it.
- A pair of bowlers seem to come to the alley together, serving primarily as minor characters and even getting their own interview in Episode 3.
- The Unfavorite: While Rico is hardly an affable boss in the first place, he seems to really have it out for Ivan in particular, practically looking for any reason to fire him.
