The Magic of Edinburgh Festival: The 3rd, 4th & 5th Signs

The third sign: we were not being paid for our services in Edinburgh, however, we were being provided with food and accommodation. Thus far, the accommodation had been found somewhat wanting, but how wrong can you go with food?

Pretty wrong, actually.

That evening we were served cheese ravioli drowning in green pesto. I later found the 10kg bag of Aldi’s ‘Frozen Ravioli’ in our freezer. The rest of our meals for the entire month contained a consistently high quantity of chillies, despite my continuous warnings that I am, in fact, allergic to chillies.

The fourth sign: the five of us set up camp in the four-bed flat and I managed to nab me the biggest room, all to myself. However, when I awoke, I found that I was accompanied by two Irishmen.

Throughout the duration of our stay, the numbers and names of flatmates was in a constant state of flux, but we finally settled on a nice, round eight – four of whom resided in my bedroom; two of whom resided in my bed.

The fifth sign was the accumulation of the 20-hour days of hard manual labour with no risk-assessments or training, 83 crying fits, 5 exhaustion collapses, 4 deserters, 3 failed fire inspections, 2 serious hospitalisations, 1 visit to a chiropractor, and several ‘spiritual healings’ provided by the management in preference to a first aid box.

At the realisation of these signs, I should have left, but we all knew that each person who deserted provided a big dollop of work for the others who stayed. And, so, we continued for the sake of our friends.

Sounds heroic, doesn’t it? It wasn’t – it was the sleep deprivation making us crazy.

And yet, it wasn’t the stunning apartment that made my month, nor was it the maximum 3 hours of sleep per night, the back-breaking physical work, the occasional meals that I couldn’t eat, the 30 minute hilly walk in Scottish weather to work every morning, the lack of free time to experience the Festival (we were each allocated a maximum of 3 days off out of the 45 we were there), it wasn’t the inferior technology and slap-dash ‘box offices’ we were supplied with (I say supplied, we had to build them ourselves from scratch), no – it was the customers.

I have often thought that the quality of any business or job can be dramatically improved upon by the removal of customers, but, as a Theatre graduate, I was shocked to find myself believing that theatre would be better off without audiences. In fact, the demolition of all theatres and even the removal of the concept of ‘theatre’ I feel would be preferable to having to work with audience members like that ever again.

Every day I was yelled at because the managers of the company had moved a venue without informing customers; I was sworn at because we didn’t show a particular play one gentleman wanted to see; I had flyers thrown at me because one lady didn’t enjoy a play; I was ridiculed by a pair of men because I looked so tired and then told to “Smile, I’m the customer, you have to smile at me!” I was spat at for asking a drunk man to leave; I was snidely told I was incompetent because a show had sold out; I was accused of theft because a couple’s booking wasn’t on the system; I was threatened with legal action because I didn’t have to authority to refund tickets; I was threatened with physical action because a woman was so late to a show that it had finished two hours earlier and, therefore, I couldn’t grant her admittance; but the final straw was when a middle-aged man came and yelled at me because there were queue-jumpers.

I had not asked any one to form a queue: this was the first I had heard of any queue and the queue-jumpers in question were a small group of OAPs who had come inside to shelter from the freezing rain and stone-dust clouds created by some sculptors and their chainsaws, working right next to said queue. The ‘gentleman’ stood across the room from me and pointedly scowled at me for almost 40 minutes, refusing to leave until the queue-jumpers had returned to the line, before demanding I make the OAPs leave by force. They all refused to re-join the line and told me I was rude for asking. The Arse then slammed his fist on the counter and shouted at me that my attitude was unacceptable. At that point, another show opened its doors and its audience filtered in. The man then yelled at me yet again because people from his queue went in. When I pointed out that it was a different show, he demanded I go and get them out, as they were obviously trying to find new ways to queue-jump.

In my head, I picked up my computer screen and smashed it into his smarmy, red face; in reality I started crying and ran away.

When I returned half an hour later, he was still there, arms folded, glaring.

I’d like to say that from this experience, I have learnt how to rough it, how to be more resourceful, how to stand up for myself and handle compromising situations; but, in truth, all I have learnt is that I don’t like sharing a room with boys, kitchens need to be cleaned, I am definitely allergic to chillies, you can only manage on 3 hours of sleep for so long, I should probably do more exercise, the customer is almost never right, and most importantly, that customer relations should only be undertaken by the deaf, blind and dumb, the insane, or skinheads who are able to throw computers and tell people, in no uncertain terms, to GET OVER IT!