HEC weekend, Reporting for Duty (Thursday)

Thursday afternoon when I arrived for my first shift, we weren't in our room yet (it was a classroom, so maybe there was still a class there?) so I was supposed to report to a third floor balcony.  How exactly does one ask for directions to a balcony?  No clue.  The last time I had to get somewhere in Statler Hall, I got hopelessly lost, so I showed up early.  Once I found a door that was open, however, I found myself exactly two floors below where I was supposed to report.  Balcony, found.

After changing into the official uniform . . . a Cornell Productions t-shirt and signing in, I was put to work putting lights on bases.  I got one demonstration and then was left to my own devices.  For the opening cocktail, the HEC designers were going for a Hall of Mirrors (Palace of Versailles) look and wanted us to light up some of the pillars in the room and the bar.  A group of us was in charge of wiring the lights for the pillars and gaffing (taping) them all down, which is where I first heard the phrase “I don’t want to see any orange.”  Words to live by.

As we were finishing up with the pillar lights, we were suddenly all sent to gaff anything else as fast as possible.  When we were sent back upstairs, it turned out that the manager had thought it was 5:30, when the event started.  It was 4:30.  Which did explain why no one else was panicking.  I finished up my shift by hauling any unused lights, bases, wires, tools, and other equipment down two stories.  This involved Cart Driving 101 and Intro to Elevator Loading.

It turned out that the room they assigned to us was a tiered classroom, which did have enough space for all the equipment, but when we rolled the cart in, you couldn't go out the door.  Fortunately, the room had three doors.  I signed out, went to get dinner, and returned to headquarters to do a little homework before my next shift.  Cornell Productions was in charge of setting up and taking down lights for events, but during the actual events, we weren’t allowed to make any appearances, which left gaps in my work schedule all weekend.

Somehow, the event only ended about half an hour late (later in the weekend, one of the cocktails ended at something like 2 in the morning instead of 12).  Everything that had taken us an hour and a half to set up took less than half an hour to take down.  That would be a recurring theme.

I had an eight o’clock class the next morning, so after we put everything back in the room, I headed back to my dorm.  Good start to my first HEC weekend.