Treat gear with respect

[icewolf08]

I need to vent for a minute. Today was strike for "A Chorus Line," and the way strike works at our theatre is that the shop comes in in the morning and does their strike and me and my electrics crew come in in the evening to do our strike. On the art deco side of the periaktoi we had LED ribbon trim. Probably about 150' of it. This is a product that costs about $100 for a 16' roll, so almost $1000 worth of product. So, when I walked into the theatre this evening, what did I find? This:

A big ball of everything that the LEDs were attached to and the LEDs themselves, still attached. Just in a pile on the floor. (the photo is of about half of the ball, I didn't think to take it until we had started working on it)

I understand that it is Sunday and it is strike and everyone wants to get in, get it done, and get out, but really! If they are going to get annoyed when i leave out a screw gun by accident, this is nuts. This of course is besides the fact that they managed to put away the power supplies and dimmers that drive the LEDs where they should go.

Also, the LEDs came out of the scenery budget for the show, and they expect to be using them again in at least one more show this season. Part of me just wanted to leave them there in a pile, and let the shop moan about it later when they were missing or destroyed, but knowing them, it would just become my problem at that point and I would get blamed.

So we spent almost 45 minutes untangling, unsticking, and rolling up the LEDs when we could have been striking lights. Had I known that this was going to happen I would have come in this morning and taken them down before the periaktoi were struck, as it would have taken maybe 10 minutes with one person to peel them off and roll them right off the scenery.

Why do we bother to spend the money on nice things if this is how they get treated? There is a reason that there are somethings that I strike right after the closing performance that go right into my office. i would rather have a disaster of an office and have my nice things, than a clean office and destroyed or missing things!

Grrrr...

 

[Clifford]

That really is unfortunate. I couldn't have taken too much time to roll it up.

 

[Van]

Boy This is one of those posts that we might want to move to a real thread. This is a huge issue for me. As a result my master Electrician and I always meet a couple of weeks or days prior to a strike to hash out the details of who's moving what and where and when. A lot of times he, the ME, wants to come in and pull practicals first, or sometimes even the night a show closes, other times it works out that me and my guys can un-plug and move stuff around. There are, of course, issues whe you get into Union Houses where the electricians don't want the carps "touching their stuff" in which case strike have to happen right on top of each other.
The biggest key to it all is Communication. The TD should be on top of this, making sure all the departments are communicating prior to a strike.

 

[Kelite]

Grrrr....

And with the economy a little tighter than normal, this situation adds insult to the all-too sensitive injury to the budget. The mentality of those who may say "it's not my job, I'm not gonna sweat it" has a tendency to rub off on others and drag morale downhill.

I think many of us have been in your shoes, and it's a lousy feeling to say the least.

Hang in there-

 

[misterm]

here at the high school level, janitors and maintenance crew love to move around things they have no business messing with, especially without informing us. came in one night to find the legs (which are dead hung, unfortunately) on their battens, but lifted from their usual spots and hung parallel to the stage on top of the fly battens. not safe by any means. why? to make room for a spelling bee. the stage that was newly varnished when i arrived 2 years ago is now scratched and dented from maintenanct dragging chairs and tables across it.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Respect is something really lacking in the world.

Icewolf, you can be sure we all have felt your pain.

 

[DuckJordan]

here at the high school level, janitors and maintenance crew love to move around things they have no business messing with, especially without informing us. came in one night to find the legs (which are dead hung, unfortunately) on their battens, but lifted from their usual spots and hung parallel to the stage on top of the fly battens. not safe by any means. why? to make room for a spelling bee. the stage that was newly varnished when i arrived 2 years ago is now scratched and dented from maintenanct dragging chairs and tables across it.

you mean you haven't covered it in masonite yet? BLASPHEMY! either way i understand the pain of people touching stuff or just pushing it into a corner. I can't count the times ive walked in to the control booth and wouldn't you know it from a meeting the night before the sound board and system is still on with all the levels maxed out and they come ask me why it was so loud on stage and why the levels back stage didn't work, it happens to be because we had to disable the remote switch on stage because they almost blew the main cluster (which is extremely hard to do since we are running not only the amp at 1/4 of the level but also the amp itself would only run the speakers at 1/2 capacity at full. I also can't count the times i've gone back stage looking for 1/4" cable and found it piled in a heap right next to the coiler with a note saying it doest work.

 

[misterm]

you mean you haven't covered it in masonite yet? BLASPHEMY!

not allowed to! can't even attach scenery to the stage!

 

[airguy]

OH, you have know idea - Where to start - hampers full of VL3500Q's piled on top of each other. Hampers full of cable all just tossed in, hampers full of S4's pars and leko's, Arri Fres., broken head covers from VL's tape to my shop door with a note "VL #2 fell".

 

[DuckJordan]

wow thats no fun, that means its always shinny ewwww... oh well... i guess there are otherways (spilled paint, covering with fabric, making removable masonite pannels, etc...)

 

[masterelectrician2112]

The stage that was newly varnished when i arrived 2 years ago is now scratched and dented from maintenanct dragging chairs and tables across it.

AMEN!! Some of the dedicated members of our tech crew club came in during the summer and repainted the entire stage black. A band camp came in the next week on our stage and dragged chairs, instruments, and who knows what else across our newly painted stage after the TD spent a nice chunk o change on the paint and we had spent an entire day painting.
Gotta love this industry on the high school level!

 

[icewolf08]

Boy This is one of those posts that we might want to move to a real thread. This is a huge issue for me. As a result my master Electrician and I always meet a couple of weeks or days prior to a strike to hash out the details of who's moving what and where and when. A lot of times he, the ME, wants to come in and pull practicals first, or sometimes even the night a show closes, other times it works out that me and my guys can un-plug and move stuff around. There are, of course, issues whe you get into Union Houses where the electricians don't want the carps "touching their stuff" in which case strike have to happen right on top of each other.
The biggest key to it all is Communication. The TD should be on top of this, making sure all the departments are communicating prior to a strike.

Actually, I do a good chunk of "pre-strike" right after closing of the final performance. However, this show, being a dance show and all, had a lot of booms that needed to come down so that the carpenters could come in the next day to strike scenery. We don't have enough tall enough git-tallers to work all the booms at once, so it took a pretty good chunk of time to get the booms struck. So time-wise I didn't even consider the LEDs.

I also knew that the periaktoi had to be disassembled at least partially to get to the wiring on the inside, and I wasn't going to start that after midnight with a small crew. I would have thought that since the money for the LEDs came out of the scenery budget for the show that the TD would have taken a little more care with them. At least they got saved as opposed to someone picking up the pile of shiny paper and tape and tossing it in the dumpster!

EDIT: I moved the thread to "What went wrong" as I think that you may be right, this could be a good discussion topic.

 

[shiben]

Our theater always strikes the night of the last performance. That way, we can enforce everyone showing up to help (its required for the class, people are graded on how well they do/participate). As the ME, I can look at people messing with my stuff this way and yell at them, and threaten to dock their grade. Works really well. However, on the respect issue, I just finished fixing over 50 2P&G cables that we discovered in a soft goods hamper. They had been left there by the previous ME, unfixed because he "didnt have time". Many of them were more broken as a result of not being coiled up/tossed in the bin than they otherwise would have been. Now makes my first purchase as ME look silly (750 feet of 12/3 and 30 each Male and Female Union Connector 2P&G ends) as well.

 

[icewolf08]

...Now makes my first purchase as ME look silly (750 feet of 12/3 and 30 each Male and Female Union Connector 2P&G ends) as well.

It doesn't make that purchase look silly. Cable and connectors are things that I buy all the time. I just went through our NFG bucket and fixed about a dozen two-fers. Almost all of them needed some new connector due to burnt or bent (beyond fixing) pins. I probably have about the same number to fix every year. I also have jumpers that need new connectors, it happens, even when you take care of the gear.

 

[shiben]

Yeah, but the sillyness comes in when now I have a large pile of cable and 2 bags of connectors sitting in my lockup/workshop, when I can barely fit myself in there (and we already have a reserve stock of both, this was to make more cables specifically.) I guess we just have a nice pile of spares if we need them. Incidentally, anyone know how you put a bullet hole shaped hole into a source 4 reflector? Found that while trying to find a place to put the new of cable.