Hi. I’m Eric and I work in AV. What exactly does that mean? Well from past experience if I try to explain your eyes will glaze over and you’ll check out of the conversation in about thirty seconds. Can I just shorten the story and say that what AV folks do is one of the top 5 most stressful jobs in the world and we slay dragons?
Except it’s not your normal fantasy tale of putting on the shiny armor, hopping on a majestic beast, slaying the evil dragon and then settling down with the princes for the rest of our days.
No, that’s too easy.
No armor, we don our trusty e-tape and C-wrench. Fire up the auto cad and charge in with our rigging plots. We slay a different dragon every week. It’s an all new battle, in an all new arena, it always feels like it’s life or death, and the client isn’t always sure it wants the dragon dead. Once it is dead, If we have done our jobs correctly, no one thinks it took any effort at all.
In the AV industry we all live in a slightly different world than most others. Long hours, travel, the challenges of dealing with a new crew of strangers in every town, clients that don’t quite understand what it is we do or what it takes to get it done, tracking every detail all the time, generally not getting those details until the last minute (didn’t we mention the band?) and even occasionally fighting with each other when we’re too busy or stressed out to realize we all face the same challenges.
Challenges. The travel and constantly being at work even when we’re home and really not having any way to talk about our day that makes sense to anyone not in the industry strains relationships, family life, and friendships. Often to the breaking point. Sometimes it seems that when we’re most successful at what we do, we’re least successful in the rest of the things that matter.
What makes it worthwhile? In short, we do. When you share the experiences, trials, and stresses that we do you eventually become a tight knit family of individuals that while we may not agree ninety percent of the time on anything, will stand behind or beside each other in any situation. Not just at work but in everything from bar fights to homelessness I’ve seen these people bail each other out without fail or question.
If your strength fails you, we’ll loan you ours. If you fall down, we’ll pick you up. If you’re overwhelmed, just ask and we’ll share the burden. It doesn’t matter what company you work for or if they have known you 15 years or 15 minutes, AV people support their own.
That, and I really like slaying dragons.
Today, we lost one of our own. Rest well Brain. I’m just sorry I never said any of that aloud to you before it was too late. I would have been there for you, any of us would have been. If you had just let us know. You always had a smile, you were always a friend when anyone needed one. I wish you had known you also had friends when you needed one.