Forum:Rant

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I'm just going to vent some stuff to get the fight out of me so that when I meet up with some bigwigs later I don't end up punching them.

Anyway, my Students Union are fucking ridiculous arse-bandits. After 6 years (why the fuck did I not go elsewhere for my postgraduate degree again!??) it's getting worse and worse and I've noticed. These fucking self-serving twats who get themselves elected to represent students are just frigging useless most of if not all of the fucking time. Let me explain my reasoning. As one or two users here might know, I occasionally do some stage managing in my spare time and some other "techie" stuff. So, my society wants to put on a show, as we do every summer. Right, we're not rich, and I understand the SU isn't either so we don't have the money to spend on lavish lighting, sound and staging. So we scrimp, save, beg, borrow and (not quite) steal and end up in the situation where we can get lights, a backdrop, some staging and a sound system for practically free.

You'd think the Students Union would fucking love this? Right? No. In fact, the dumb cunts have made a ruling (although no one can track down when the fuck or where the fuck they decided this because it's not in the minutes of any meeting but they're enforcing it anyway) that we MUST, I repeat MUST hire any technical theatre equipment. And only from two companies. At a really far from competitive price. And with a "trained operator" even though most students in the technical theatre business can work a desk. Fucks sake. This is going to cost us upwards of £500. That's £500 we don't fucking have and could never raise based on the scale of the show. Now what's especially fucking galling and pissing me off is the fact WE CAN FUCKING BUY a second-hand fairly decent LED lighting rig for only £400. That's BUY. I.e., ours to keep, use whenever we like and maybe for at leats 5 years. No. We're not allowed to do that; we're not allowed to buy anything of the sort. Oh, and the other advantage of buying one outright is that we could loan it to another group whenever they wanted, but we AREN'T ALLOWED TO SHARE RESOURCES.

Seriously, we could borrow the sound system from any number of people but NOPE. We could go with the option of getting an ex-student mate of mine who does really competitive rates for setting up sound equipment (he doesn't charge for time and just asks to cover expenses) which would give us the full fucking works (wireless, PA, amps, desk and wiring) for a couple of hundred quid. But hell no. We have to hire from the these companies, so the same thing would cost us at least three times as much, if not more. We could borrow a backdrop from a friend of mine for nothing (well, the time and petrol for me to drive back up north and pick it up). No. We can't do that. We have to hire it from these companies (via this retarded fucking agreement that apparently doesn't even fucking exist). So on the one hand we have these societies officers from the Union going "oh, we're not made of money, you'll just have to not be as lavish" and when we do manage to find a good fucking deal, they turn around and try to enforce these fucking retarded fucking rules. Fucktarded fuckers. They've already taken the only appropriate venue by turning it into a bar, now they're cutting our ability to do this shit anywhere. And this is on top of health and safety regulations that are going insane. Of course, as a chemistry graduate I'm happy with health and safety, it saves fucking lives, but when these retarded bastards tell us to fill in a risk assessment for people singing or getting a splinter, but they don't check if the set and staging is stable enough so won't fall and fucking kill someone (for the record, it is safe, I consider myself quite good at set construction, but the fact is that they don't check) I'm left pondering what the fuck they're doing, it's clearly not for anything useful. I'm wondering if next year we'll even be able to do anything.

Now I'm left to have an emergency meeting to see if this thing can even go ahead with a Plan B. If they'll even let us do a Plan B or whether they're just out to fuck us all over.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the back of these useless cunts when I'm finished writing up in 18 months or so, it's practically impossible for any group to do performances any more. ^theist 20:08, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

If there are no minutes they shouldn't be able to enforce it right? Why not go ahead? — Pietrow ☏ 19:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking on the bright side. These people are being well prepared for a career in local government or in the facilities department of a large corporation. I have a similarly irritating story of an encounter some years back with a training group in a previous company. It went something like this.

Me: We need this training quite urgently, and we've prepared material. Would you mind reviewing it for us?

Them: You can't do that. Training is our job.

Me: Okay, when could you do it?

Them: I don't know.

Me: This is quite urgent and we're happy to do it.

Them: It's our job.

Me: Okay, do have any plans to cover this?

Them: No.

and so on until the training was done in secret. ConcernedResident ^{Fightin' round the world} 19:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I worked for a university for 5 years and all this sounds quite typical. Basically, you're at the mercy of a bunch of no-brained twats who think they're some kind of fucking superior uber-business managers who think the rules and regs are the way to go (over common sense) and pissing people off is good management. If I were you, I would write a letter explaining the situation (less colourful that your above post of course) to all those involved, outlining the problem, and then state that due to the restrictions you will not be able to stage the show. Either (a) They realise they are twats and back down, or (b) they don't back down, everyone realises the people responsible are twats, and you don't have to spend your time doing the show. Win win. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 19:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

My S/O works for the union of the unis around here (not mine, thank gods, I stay well away from the SU at my place) and it's just the same. You can't have more staff for the shop, not in this climate, you'll all just have to give 110% blah blah blah. No, you can't repaint the mangy ceiling...And then they only spend a fucking fortune outsourcing their payroll which one person used to be able to do perfectly adequately in-house for a third less. Sorry you have to deal with that shit too. -- 20:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Twenty-three "fucks." Impressive. If it's the Student's Union that's stopping your society from getting the equipment, appeal. I don't know why they should have the amount of control over a society to say what they can and can't buy with the society's own money. Socialism probably. (Although don't mention that, as everybody knows that British students are either hardline Tories or radical socialists). SJ ^Debaser 20:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, anyway, some of it's sorted. They freed up our remaining grant so we can pay for it. While that means I can go ahead and do a show with a half-decent PA, it's still costly £300 for something that I could have either begged/borrowed for free, or had someone come in and do mates rates for £125. This means no lighting either (not too bad, in the summer you can't get decent blackout so it's pointless anyway), although I'm going to experiment with some wooden frames and some desk lamps - if this plan looks as insane as I think it will, I'll post pics. With all this hassle, is it any wonder that another group are doing their production in a beer garden next week? ^theist 19:17, 11 June 2010 (UTC)