EPTTL;DR: + Show Spoiler +
International business competition held at my school, was a logistical nightmare when it didn't have to be, I was treated like crap by multiple people. The executives from the organization didn't know how to run a show and wouldn't let me put in input on how to run a show either. Most of them couldn't speak into a microphone to just read names either. Throughout the day everyone was just a shallow prick to me and my fellow stage crew members and it seems that everyone only cared about appearances and reputation over doing anything right. When asked about why everyone was so shallow; "It's just that kind of event". The reason didn't justify the actions in any way.
Want to read it in more detail? Well here's the whole story:
So the weekend of November the 1st in the year 2014 I had the dishonour of working tech for DECA Peel Regionals hosted at my school, Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School.
DECA is (supposedly) an international business competition where students compete in pretend marketing for different products. It looks good on a post-secondary school application and on a resume. They have regional events where awards are won and people qualify into provincials -> nationals -> continental, etc.
Things started off on the Friday, about an hour in of setup, officials from DECA came in to the school to setup the stuff that we didn't have as well as making sure things were how they wanted them. They begun to told me to change/add things and right then and there I knew that this weekend would not be good.
So I begun to fix what they wanted, added the things they never told me about earlier and by the time I was finished checking tech for the whole building it was about 45 minutes later than I had liked, I had almost fainted from exhaustion and had only eaten about half of what I normally would have at that point in the day. BUT I WAS FINISHED. So I started to lock up the equipment storage and told the head teachers for the event that I wanted the cafetorium (the main place that I setup as it was where the show component, the awards presentation, would be) to be locked until I wanted it unlocked again. There was lots of expensive equipment in there and I didn't want anything gone by morning; I didn't want anything touched at all because then things would've changed. But when I came in the next morning I had to kick about 20 people out because someone left it unlocked and all of the people in charge didn't seem to care.
Let me back up a bit, in the competition you get marks off or added depending on how your dressed. I said morning or hello to a few people in the hallways and they didn't say it back, they just kept walking after giving me a bad look which already made me begin to dislike these people. A few other competitors were lost so I offered to help them find where they needed to go and they would say "No thanks I'd rather be late". While people came in, remarks on how sketchy the area and the people looked were thrown around the main foyer.
As the day went on more things kept changing with the awards assembly. I continued to keep running around fixing small things like amount of like or microphone positioning. It all added up until about 10 minutes in the show when I was informed that there would be
- 1) A disabled person that would be making an address
2) a change in schedule
3) Was a new component to the show that required me to play "hype music"
4) No script or run sheet
All of these set off more red flags and I came to this conclusion: DECA Ontario was incompetent at running a show. I ran to go grab another microphone and XLR cord and set it up for the disabled person after asking my backstage marshall to hand it to them and collect it when the address was over.
During the assembly was the worst, the "DECA Executives" didn't know how to listen to instructions of "Don't touch the microphone or stand, it's setup so 2 people are audible when at the podium" nor were they able to speak into a microphone properly, most of them were unable to project while others stuttered/didn't know what to say. At one point during the awards show it basically paused for about 5 minutes because they got lost as to what slide they were supposed to be on. When the day was finally done after 2 terrible awards assemblies I found out that apparently we ran one of the best DECA events in Peel, which made me realize how bad were the others for this to be good? Along with that the 'Executives' literally just left everything for us to clean up, even the stuff they specifically told us not to touch during setup.
At the end of that day on my way out I handed the keys back to a teacher from my school and when asked about my experience by a few people I started to talk about how the DECA Executives were incompetent and was told to speak quietly because they were across the room. My response was "If I wouldn't say it to their faces why wouldn't I just not say it to anyone?" and then left because I'd had enough. I thought I was working with adults on the show component, but I later learned those executives are just high schoolers which started to make some things make sense. They were literally just glorified competitors.
During the day I was tweeting some remarks about how unorganized it was, most of the people were arses, me not wanting to work for them again, etc. TODAY (November 2nd, a day after the event) one of the DECA Executives decided to reply to a bunch of those tweets passive-agressively and then also follow me for some reason. I said nothing back but I did laugh at him a bit and wanted to share the hilarity with a few esports friends. He later unfollowed the me as well as deleted his tweets. But I don't care that he did, I have them screen capped.
+ Show Spoiler [His stupidity] +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DLpJ2xl.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0oUAGGa.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LyADisF.jpg)
At the end of the day, the competition was again just about appearances. If they ever come back to my school I'm straight up not doing it after how they treated our school and our equipment. They can just stand their on a badly lit stage trying to yell to 1000 people for all I care. I also hope those kids that decided to pass me by because of what I was wearing realize that it's just much easier to just be polite back and reply with the same nonchalant greeting and be on your way afterwards.
