I have come to a decision about two of the things I do for Voodoo, one is Open Mic and the other Alternation club night and that decision is to stop doing both of them. Frankly the poultry £30 that I get paid to ‘engineer’ open mic night isn’t worth the hassle, dealing with assholes and running open mic isn’t in my job description. And Alternation that has become a joke since the smoking ban kicked in, I spend hours every day getting the songs that people request, not to mention promotion, designing of promotional materials, where as Kelly and Steve just turn up, do their job and walk out with more money than me on most nights. Tonight I made £11, which really isn’t worth the effort that I have put in during the week. So that leaves me with only one option and that option is to quit the night, which means the night dies with me as 98% of all the music played I provide with my iPod and laptop, which I will still have to pay for, so basically I made a net loss of £19 tonight as I never even covered the payment for the laptop that was bought specially for the DJ night when Stephen left. I am fed up of people saying it’s a team effort, it’s not a team effort, Kelly and Steve are being paid for their services, same as Phil pays me for my sound engineering services on his promo nights. If it was a real team effort everyone would take home an equal split of the money made, which was £61 and that was only thanks to me raising door prices to £2 after midnight to try to give people the incentive to come earlier instead of turning up at 1am. Frankly for what little money I earn from both of these nights I’d rather have the nights off and relax, watch a little satellite TV which I am having installed today. There’s other little things that bug me as well, for example Kelly going out for a smoke putting a customer in charge of the door, frankly that is unacceptable, you wouldn’t do it if you worked in a store as a cashier, so why should Voodoo be any different. I am also pissed off with the attitude of certain people about certain things; bitching about bigger girls and how they like to show off their assets to their best advantage. It’s no secret that I am attracted to bigger girls, and I find it quite offensive how that person can mouth off about someone else without even knowing them with comments like “fat ugly bitch” and “I shouldn’t be forced to look at that” – Well don’t fucking look then; I tried to get that message across last night, but yet again after that person has had a few drinks they refuse to see reason. So it’s best for me to step back from Alternation and leave them to it should they want to try continue with the night, then they come under Phil’s employment, not mine! My only regret is that I didn’t come to this decision before spending out £250 on a laptop what I didn’t really need for anything other than the DJ night. If Voodoo want me to DJ, then I’ll still do the night, but I want to be paid the going DJ rate which is £40 per night, I don’t want the hassle of promotion and spending hours on end acquiring new songs in my ‘down’ time for next to no return! But to be honest I can see the night falling by the wayside very very quickly. I am very disillusioned with life and people and the last two nights has made me even more so. I need to be more tough about things work related, no more freebies, not that it matters, the soundsystem is half fucked because of certain people messing with the system that shouldn’t be and has blown three cones across three speaker enclosures and that person is the owner of the venue I have been told on good authority. Frankly that rig needs to be fixed for two reasons (1) the system isn’t really in any sort of state to be used for live music; and (2) because three of the very expensive, very powerful amps are only driving one unit, damaging the amps and/or cones. This person is supposed to be an electrician, so he should understand about amps expecting a load to be at the end of the speaker cable, but instead it finds only half the load that it expects and the amps have to work harder, hence run hotter causing damage! Although I do enjoy sound engineering, I could do without the hassle of having substandard equipment and everyone bitching at me because it doesn’t sound right, the thoughts of getting a 9 – 5 job are rearing it’s ugly head again and I know that I am not the only one that feels that way among the people that make the place work!