I’m a media technician. I have more than 20 years experience in the field, and I’m damn good at it.
My boss Liz asked me to spec out a portable public address system for $2,000 or less. I asked my questions, I recommended a small system for $800 that would do everything we needed. Throwing in some equipment cases, cables, and a roll-aound cart brought the cost up to about $1500. Liz sent a purchase order up the line, with exactly what I wanted.
Liz’s boss paid absolutely no attention. What did she do? She asked her husband, who’s a “telecommunications manager” at the university. She ordered the equipment he specified.
I have a small Shure mixer. He had us order another mixing board, without a power amplifier, basically duplicating the Shure with no real new capability. Did he order a power amplifier? No, he ordered 4 powered speakers, each with its own amplifier, and each of them must be individually plugged into separate power sources (oh yeah, and we don’t have any space where we would use more than 2 speakers at a time). Because this is a hospital and there are odd rules about portable equipment, I’m not even allowed to buy extension cords. He ordered a $200 microphone, when we have plenty of those, but no mike clip, and it doesn’t fit into the mike clips we have.
And it cost $3000! 50% over budget, after she’s been screaming at us all year long about making our department financially independent.
While the gear is nice, it is completely inappropriate for our needs. Neither Liz nor I had the slightest idea that her boss had swapped the POs til the gear arrived. We learned what happened when Liz taked her boss what happened to the PO. What’s worse, the gear came first through our “biomedical” department for safety testing, where hospital property labels were permanently attached to it all, so we can’t return it.
Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!!
Oh yeah, in the past she has paid substantial “consulting” fees to her husband for this kind of “expertise”, and for coming in to do technical work for special events. Since I’ve been hired, she has insisted several times that he be brought in for high-profile special events, where he sits and does nothing, because he knows, and has told me, that I’m perfectly capable of doing the work. For the past six months, I’ve simply ignored her demands to bring in her hubby. I was even told, today, to bring him in so he could “show me” how to operate this gear. I had already set up the whole system and was testing it within a half-hour of getting it, so that too seems unnecessary.
I have the trust and faith of my boss. Apparently, niether of us has the trust and faith of my boss’s boss.