Tales from the AV World (part 2)

Why does a company bend over backwards to keep pleasing clients who are a huge pain in the ass? I honestly dont know. The headache and bullshit you put up with, in long run, just is not worth the trouble. Peace of mind can be a good thing.

Basically I'm referring to this small percentage of clients who want the proper $50,000 show for $5000. OK, that's most clients. But you deal with that part. Hell I understand every event has a budget. And normally we will try to work with in that budget...if you give a clue to how much you want to spend. A ballpark figure would be better than nothing. Also, if you know how much the same event cost the previous year, and you add more people and need more AV to cover the additional bodies, then why in the hell do you think the price will go down and why is you event budget less? I wonder if catering people go through this same shit with clients.

I'm talking about the clients who no matter how much extra effort you put into their event, they are NEVER satisifed. The event could go perfect and they'd bitch about the projection not being bright enough or the ligts dimming to far down for a video cue or presenters didn't get a mic in time (even though it was some one else job to get the talent to the audio guy, so they could put a microphone on them). They always complain about some minute detail, even when you are not at fault. The damn building could lose power and they point to the AV staff and scream. You could work 20 hours straight and they dont care.

I could go on and on, but what's the use. Like every other job, you deal with the shit. So many items in our industry has become consumer friendly that most people think they can do our jobs and why should they pay the extra amount. It's just not the case and often these people get burned. Or they ruin the cross rented equipment.

I leave you today with this humble saying: "This job would be great...if it wasn't for the damn customers."