Work Stories: Episode 10: Shine the Light on Me

Previously on Work Stories, I told the tale of the time when I learned my high school math while sitting at work staring into a parking lot.  It was probably the most boring and pointless work story that I’ve written about, but they can’t all be great.  This week’s will be better.  I can tell you that.

One job I don’t think I’ve talked about yet while writing these work stories is a job I had two years in a row that lasted two weeks each time.  I thought “What better way to do Work Story 10 than to have another job come into the mix?”  So here it is.  Every year, Niagara Falls, Ontario has a concert to bring in the New Year.  Two of the years (I forget which two) I worked at the concert.  I got paid for some, volunteered for some, and had a good time.

My main duties at the concert were to set up and take down the stage, lighting, and sound equipment.  Then during the concert, both years, I helped to run the spotlights.  The spotlights were obviously a good distance from the stage and there was a lot of space for spectators to stand in between the tower holding the lights and the stage itself.  And there were always a lot of people during the concert, so if you had to use the restroom, it was going to take a good ten minutes to get there.  That’s beside the point.

The first year that I was working there, a few of us were hanging out in the lighting tower before the show.  It was just beginning to get a little dark, so we were able to see the spotlights no matter where they were directed.  Being the teenagers that we were, we decided to play around with the spotlights a little bit.  Don’t worry, we didn’t break anything expensive.  This isn’t one of those stories.

So we’re fooling around with the spotlights during the downtime that we had between the practice sets of the bands and the actual concert.  One guy gets onto one of the spotlights and starts using it to follow people around the ground.  I’m on another spotlight checking out the colour filters that will be used during the show.  The changing colours of light that I’m pointing at the stage are amusing me because I am easily amused.

I turn to the guy on the other spotlight and he goes “Hey guys, look at that hot chick down there!”  Now, from the distance at which he was to where the light was shining, the circle of light had grown immensely.  There were a good five to ten people in this circle of light.  We didn’t know who he was talking about.  “That one in the orange coat!  Look at that ass!”  We looked.  Then they turned around.

In the orange coat was a middle-aged man.  This man looked up at us, waved, and walked away.  The guy on the spotlight muttered under his breath and turned off the spotlight.  The other three of us that were in the tower with him laughed a good laugh for a few minutes.  Good times.

Maybe you had to be there to truly understand the humour of the moment.  Maybe you had to be an immature teenager like we all were at the time.  Maybe I missed some vital information that makes the story truly funny.  Or maybe you appreciated it as much as I do.  I have a fond memory of the teenage stupidity of the moment and I thought I’d share it with you.

That’s it for this week’s Work Story.  That’s 10 down and many more to come.  I hope you’ve been enjoying reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.  Come back next week for another work story.  Until then, let it snow.  (It’s snowing pretty good right now.)