As I have mentioned here before, my wife is the queen of reality shows. I give a nod of gratitude to whatever power controls such things, as I am fortunate in that she has not gotten into the really bad ones. No Swan or Bachelor or Date My Dad or whatever the true dreck is. But we do get plenty of Survivor, The Amazing Race and American Idol. What can I tell you? Her latest thing, more of a game than a reality show, is Deal or No Deal. If you have missed it, there is a big, tiered stage with a bunch of hot model chicks, each with a briefcase that holds a placard with a dollar figure on it. The player picks one case which becomes theirs, and then starts having the models open cases, hoping for low numbers and that their own case holds the big money. After every few cases, the host calls an offstage "banker" who figures the odds based on the cases already opened and offers to buy the contestant's case for an amount somewhere between the lowest and highest numbers still in play. The host tells the contestant the amount the bank is willing to pay for their still unopened case and says "deal or no deal." Hence the name. The contestant has to decide if they want to take the amount offered, or chance opening more cases and finding out that their own case holds a buck. (Side note, the host is a comedian named Howie Mandel who is, these days, a pretty big deal. In the late '70s, I saw Howie Mandel at the Comedy Store in Westwood, CA and he was way weirder than his current image would suggest. Weird–and funny–enough that I still remember it.) So the other night we were watching the show (actually she was watching, and I was working on FOH articles on my laptop and glancing up every once in a while), and the contestant was a young woman whose husband was serving in Iraq and, of course to boost ratings, the producers had arranged to have him on video feed to watch and give advice on whether or not to make a deal. After opening a bunch of cases she ended up with one huge amount still in play and four or five much smaller amounts. The offer from the "bank" was in the low six figures and her soldier/husband was almost pleading for her to make the deal. Actually he wanted her to take the deal the round before for less money but she wanted to open one more case. And she decided to do the same again, despite his pleas. But this time she opened the only large amount left in play, the offer plummeted and she walked away with a few grand instead of enough to buy a house in most parts of the country.
I couldn't help but think about how it is rarely the big thing that causes a crisis, rather, it is that one last little thing added to your plate. Like the contestant's one last case. There has been a lot of electronic conversation via e-mail in the past few weeks about taking or not taking a gig, and when the money gets so low that it is just not worth the effort. And I kept thinking about how the soundcos who know how to say no and turn down jobs that don't make sense often succeed, where the guy who takes every gig he can get, regardless, usually stretches himself too thin, does a crappy job on all of the gigs and does not get a second chance. Guys like this tend to go out of business after a period of time while the guy who makes it is the one who says, "The gig pays a measly grand. Labor and all the rest of it will cost me $800 and all it takes is one blown driver and I am in the red on the gig. No thanks."
I have had a couple of sound buddies recently bemoan the fact that they were turning down work. But when I pointed out that they were taking the good gigs and leaving the crappy ones for someone willing to take them, they looked at it differently. Just something to think about next time someone calls for a sub-par-paying, harder-than-it should- be gig. Sometimes it pays to say, "Sorry, no deal."
