I was working in Austin, Texas for a company called Media Event Concepts doing mostly corporate AV support. It was the one job in my life that I can comfortably say I hated; however, at the time I merely had the wrong attitude. I now know that God put me there to ultimately learn a few things about life (mostly humility), but he also put me there to learn a thing or two about AV. Almost 10 years later, I'm employing much of the stuff I picked up way back when. Thank you, Gordon. One of MEC's clients was a worldwide computer company headquartered in New York with a big campus in Austin. For some reason, the management of this firm liked to fly to Austin to have big meetings. One particular meeting I was working was being broadcast via teleconference to boardrooms all over the world. It was a fairly simple setup–a couple wireless mics, CD player, recorder, small mixer, phone interface for outside questions and a couple speakers on sticks. There were maybe 150 folks in the room. For the wireless mics, MEC had recently purchased some units from Samson. I had used them before and was fairly confident they would give me no trouble. Hmph.
The first guy got up, did his spiel and everything was fine. He sat back down, I turned his mic off and the next guy got up and started going over his charts. I was trying to stay awake when I started hearing some strange sounds coming out of the sound system. I looked at all the faders and the only one that was up was the current speaker's. The strange sound quickly went away so I didn't think anything more of it. A couple minutes later I heard (as did everyone else around the world) the sound of running water. Later we hear the sound of more running water and then the unmistakable sound of a flushing toilet. Halfway through our sonic tour of a corporate executive bathroom, I realized what it was, and seeing the first presenter not in his seat, knew who it was, but, for the life of me, couldn't figure out why I was hearing this guy. All of the channels were down, except for the guy up front speaking.
Fortunately, this particular executive was a bit of a closet comic and was always finding ways to lighten up a meeting. After someone went out into the hall to tell him what happened, he came back into the room to a standing ovation, gave a wave and a bow to all corners, and sat down. He even thanked me for such a memorable time.
I quickly figured out what it was. There had to be a "combine channels" switch someplace and after the meeting was over, I yanked that dude out of the rack and went hunting. And there it was in the back: one of those almost invisible, black-on-black, half recessed switches that no one ever notices. Apparently, the accessories bag that we always store in the back of the wireless rack had knocked the switch to the "combined" position.
I stopped on the way back to the shop and bought a small tube of silicon glue and squirted quite a glob into the switch so it would never move again.
I went back to the office, confessed to the office manager, and after she stopped laughing at me, started making phone calls. Alas, however, the damage was done. At every high level meeting I worked after that, the executive I was pinning a mic to always asked me if I had heard about "that guy" who went to the bathroom with the wireless mic still on. And then the exec would tell me how he was listening in Botswana or someplace and that everyone was laughing up a storm. To ease his discomfort I assured him that it would never happen on my watch. Technically that was true, since there was now about an ounce of silicon keeping all those errant switches in place.
Ray Fishel
Chief Bottle Washer & Systems Design
Hairel Enterprises
