Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal

It's 9:30 am when I'm unceremoniously awoken to a phone call. Of course it's my boss. Yay. Bill. What do you have in store for me this week? I mean considering that I haven't been paid for the last 4.

Well there is some sort of show that rehearses tomorrow. Would I mind coming in at 9 and staying until 9 you say? That should really shoot up the amount on my next pay check. Of COURSE I'll help you out. Who knows there might be some new vandalism to giggle over.

Well there is no new vandalism to giggle over. As always I show up to work late to show my blatant disrespect for the authority figures that might be around. Suprise to me NO ONE was around. For the next 2 hours and fifteen minutes I dragged a couch down the hall and around the corner and fell asleep on it backstage listening to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I wake up to the sounds of four young people dicking around on stage. I saw them go in the door and didn't think anything of it. Thinking "Well there is my event for the day 2 hours late" In the E-mail bill told me they would break at 11:30 - 1. These people are just showing up it's 11:30 now. Well the youths on the stage show me just what they are all about by beat boxing into the microphone on the podium. Badly.

I surprise everyone appearing from behind the curtains and tell them in so many words. Yea, Could you stop that? Thanks. After the initial shock of having someone come out of no where they realize I am not dressed like an authority figure so karma kind of paid back all the disrespect I showed up with this morning.

There is nothing better than an indignant kid asking you "Uh, who are you?"
Well I'm the Liz the God Damn Tech and I work here and I'd really appreciate it if you not only got the hell out of my face, but also stayed the hell off the microphone.
At least that is what I wish I had said. I really just replied "I work here."
Well that seemed to satisfy them until thier REAL authority figure showed up yelling at them for not being where they were supposed to be. Vindication! Now I don't have to feel bad about being rude. Especially waking up to see one of them changing pants in the hallway instead of going down the hall to the bathroom.

After a 30 minute ADHD conversation with a woman who repeats everything several times I discover that I am not just here for a rehearsal, but for a dance/fashion/drama/award ceremony/show.

I also found out that one of the women in charge had been sitting in the lobby for the past hour and a half wondering where all the kids who are supposed to be in the show and not knowing how to get into the theatre. Whereas I was sitting back stage for two hours wondering where the heck anyone who was supposed to be here was.

So what was going to be a twelve hour shift really just has me sitting on my ass for 8 hours with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and sleep.

And then I work a show for four hours and leave. Go me!

or that's what I originally thought.

I decided that since I was scheduled for two sperate shifts. 9 - 3:30 with a break around 11 and then 5 - 9, and since I don't drive I'll just stay through the whole time.

Since this particular post is about the client and not Bill annoying me I'll leave the break for another time.

I showed back up around 5:30 set up the stage, a walky talky turned on all the lights and unlocked what was needed and went to the lighting booth to await the pain.

Knowing full well that out of the 60 kids in the show or that the show was four 9 of them showed up for rehearsal. So the women in charge had no idea what was going on or when they might show.

Because of the NON rehearsal I had to wing the lights and just make up something for whatever I thought they would be using.

Which soon started. Almost immediately a third into the show one of the main Lekos on Channel 1 blows. Every one who stands at the podium is mostly in the dark. At this point they had angered me enough in not responding to any thing I said on the walki talki and yelling incesantly for me to do things if I did not respond right away. I just have to be honest I didn't fix it. I didn't notice at first and by the time I did realize it had happened I just shrugged and said fuck it.

They skipped around on the program and dragged on entirely too long. They had three slide show presentations that they didn't tell anyone about and somehow thought I had a projector to use for them. They took SO LONG changing for this fashion show that They cut one of the dances. Also other people came out to small talk the audience while they waited for the models to change. During which the audience sat in the dark. They ran back upstairs afterwards and told me to put on a certain song because they (the models) hadn't finished. Which thankfully never happened seeing as their Guest speaker preached on for entirely too long keeping me there for a full hour after I was supposed to leave.

I think his message was that black people arej ust as good as white people. We need to remember that if you give me a (white famous person who did something important) I can give you a (mirrored individual who has also done something important in the same vien as the original white person but happen to be black) Which is the kind of relation you can make three times or so in a speech and have it make sense. But this bloke went on for forty minutes! He had like a hundered of these examples Only to of course end with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama. Or it could have been an FDR, by this point it was 30 minutes after when I was supposed to be able to leave and I just truly wanted to haul ass so I wasn't paying attention.

The original woman I met with found me after the show and thanked me for all my patience working with the clients that she's happy it went off so well knowing it was planned that afternoon and told me to go enjoy dinner and gave me an applebees gift card. She had read my mind I was just on nmy edge I wanted to leave so badly I thanked her graciously and ate buffallo wings less than 40 minutes later.

So Thanks To You Woman Who Told Everyone To Call Me Ms. Liz

You fixed the night.

_Liz

Constructive Vandalism

So as much as I do tend to dislike my job it's mostly because of the asinine way I feel like my highly underqualified boss behaves more than what I have to do. I really love theatre and I like doing even the menial things. I like painting sets and building sets and I like hanging lights, I even enjoy sitting through shows and musicals even tho I'm fairly sure that Nate hates most of those things.

Recently however someone has been coming into the building after hours and vandalizing things. Not even smart things just anything. They went into the catwalk and took all the fuses out of the dimmer box and fiddled with all the circuits and set ups. When I came in the next day with Bill not only did half the lights not work but we had to overhaul the entire light set up. Which to be honest needed to be done anyway. The new light setup is just as bad as the old one. BUT at least it's better in a few ways.
So we overhauled the entire light system and figured out what was wrong with the dimmer box and it was fixed by the next day. it took all week to get the lights back up to where they needed to be.

I go into work yesterday to discover someone took black spray paint and vanalized the billboards by writing TAG and Bill's name. They also sprayed every congratulations letter that had been posted about the last show. The spray painted the fuse box cover and the water fountain as well as the sign on the door leading to backstage.
After that wonderful spray excursion they trekked to Bill's office which is such a stickler because this definitly means they have keys. If the journey to the catwalk proved nothing now I kknow they HAD to have keys. There are at least TWO doors they have to get past to accomplish this new one. They went into Bill's office and cut the cord to his mouse and keyboard. As in with a boxcutter or scissors.

I have nothing wrong with them obviosuly exacting some sort of plan of revenge against Bill but I really wish two things. A. They stop making more work for me because I like being lazy, and B. That they get a little more creative with thier vandalism. if you have something to say and you have a can of spray paint I don't know why you couldn't go to town across his framed Nominations [not wins] Why can't you spray paint Fuck You Bill on the elephant door which is to be honest entirely impossible to clean. It would be there for a long time unless he painted over it. Why couldn't you turn every light in the theatre the other way instead of stealing easily replacable fuses from the dimmer box?
I'm just asking mysterious vandal that you get more humourus with your vandalism. Bill knows you hate him and he is seriosuly hard pressed to figure out why. So If you do hate him congrats on that. But don't make me hate you too get - creative, get constructive.

To be Honest I was considering putting in my two weeks notice this week because as always there have been hijinks involved with me getting paid. But I simply can't pass up a chance to see what's going to happen next.

So keep up the good work, and push the boundaries of your creativity.


_Liz

On Came The Storm, Out Went The Wind

So Off I went to our bosses office. I had a small list of demands. Nate and I had been talking and pulled together a list of stuff we wanted to get done, things we felt that after being done would help contribute to a happier and safer working environment.

We were hoping to get more hours, To get these dangerous speakers hanging above the stage DOWN. That we would have better scheduling, not a random e-mail the day before he wants us to come in along with that more hours.
We were hoping that as the people who work the events we could have some more communication for the shows to actually go off better.
We were going to request that he hire both of us for shows that required intensive lighting and sound board work so one person wouldn't be scrambling to do the job of two people.

We were also going to request some new tools for the shop. Drills that work, screw guns that aren't broken. Maintenance.

We walked in expecting to actually get some of this stuff done, to talk about it and have a conversation.

He shot down more hours, he shot down taking the speakers of the stage and I have to be honest I lost my will to stand there and talk to him. If I weren't so damn broke and in need of hours I wouldn't go into work tomorrow either. Working at this theater has so broken my disobediant will to stand up and insist things be done right.

I don't even want to claim I'm sticking around to try and get him fired, or that I'm there to gripe about it online. I honest to god just want to quit working there.
No one else seems to care that things are being done half ass. It's morally painful to be surrounded by people who think barely enough is Too much.

I love theater too much to be able to stand this much longer. I'm pulling together my resume as I type.

_Liz