Sound technician’s dream summer music festival gig goes off‑key when supervisor, Anna, waves hot tea over the mixer to boss him around: ‘Now our boss says we're "acting like children"’

A European music festival summer audio engineering gig hits feedback the moment a supervisor treats a student tech like a human aux cord and waves a hot drink over the mixer like a thermal compressor.

The setup reads simple on paper, yet the side tasks keep piling up until the job starts clipping. One smug line about quitting plays on loop like a bad sample, then the tea hovers over the faders and the threat spikes into the red. Management strolls in with both of you acting like children, the kind of flat response that lands with zero gain and all hiss. From the lawn the festival sounds clean. Backstage the mix is mud, the lanyard runs hot, and the youngest person in the chain becomes the default patch bay for everyone else's chaos.

This is how small power EQs the room. Turn up control, turn down boundaries, and drown the signal in requests until silence feels like insubordination. Tasks drift off the rider, roles detune, and attention gets sampled for parts. The crowd hears vibes. The crew hears phase issues. Threats become the compressor that slams everything into obedience with no regard for tone. Call it workflow and it passes as music. Call it what it is and someone accuses you of making noise.

My supervisor threatened to pour hot tea on my soundboard to force me to do her work. Now our boss says we're "acting like children" and need to resolve it. What do I do?

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The show keeps rolling on a prayer and gaffer tape. The gear stays dry, the patience gets scratchy, and the lesson burns in like a watermark. Protect the signal. Cut the noise. Treat every petty power move like RF interference and keep the antenna pointed at the work. When the season ends, fade them out, cash the check, and leave their drama in the monitor mix where it belongs.
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