I'm wondering if anyone has veteran experience or sage advice in how to personally deal with another mixer who repeatedly poaches work you're up for. To some degree, I understand it's the nature of the business and you can't take things personal; it's a dog eat dog competitive industry. On the other hand when something repeatedly just doesn't feel right, it makes me side-eye.
I'm originally from Los Angeles but I work in a smaller market now. Our market is a little hit or miss - there's a ton of work outside of features but, the narrative market comes and goes. When a feature comes to town, there really are only two local options (in the whole state) for a production mixer with the chops for a long-form feature - myself and a colleague in town. This other third mixer was closeby in a neighboring market but, would always hit us up for information about a gig (the only time he ever reached out to us) saying work was sketchy and he was having a hard time (even though he works all the time), then later we would find out he landed the job and sometimes at different rates than what all the other mixers in town quote. So not only would this third mixer with feature experience come to town in an already small market, they would seemingly underbid our work. Recently, he relocated to a larger market (ATLANTA) for more work opportunities. However, they keep coming back and working on a lot of gigs in our area (and still hitting us up for info about work) saying they can't find enough work (BS).
We're both union and recently I lost a bid to mix a tier one. I was talking with the prod super for about a month then all of a sudden radio silence. Come to find out, this other mixer is coming up from Atlanta to do it, which is perplexing because I know the production was looking for a local.
Basically what I'm wondering is if we're taking this too personally and/or what we can personally do to cope/adapt our mindset towards this. I know it's a much more nuanced conversation than doing XYZ; it's just very frustrating. Anecdotally... Most of my negative experiences I've had surrounding a production in the last two years have involved this guy. It's like the mindset is, all my work is mine and all your work is mine too.
If it looks like a duck...
Hopefully looking for a constructive conversation but I know I'm gonna get some grumpy responses.
