Decent gig - Loader/Unloader Stage Miracles Employee Review

No pressure environment Leadership very people friendly

none that I can remember. Very conducive environment

Miracles allow crew to choose when and where they want to work. You can cancel a shift within 24 of start time. 5 hour minimum call which means you'll be paid for 5 hours even if a shift takes 1 hour. The camaraderie between the crew can make shifts very enjoyable If you're reliable and a hard worker and then you can get on show calls where you basically get paid to chill backstage and watch the show. The jobs can be very diverse from stadium shows to TV sets to recording studios which keeps it from getting too repetitive. On big jobs you normally get fed and the foods usually really good. You get free tea and coffee on most shifts. I've had the chance to meet some of my favourite artists which on it's own make much of the job worth it.

The hours are often very antisocial as most jobs require you to work the load in and out. This means you'll be at a venue between 8-10 in the morning, leave in the afternoon, come back around 9/10pm and stay anywhere from 12-6am. Doing multiple days in a row is completely draining and on busy weeks I've averaged 4/5 hours sleep a night. The work is also very physical and dangerous as your main job is unload heavy equipment from trucks using mostly ramps and brute force. Most bands save money by stacking flight cases their trucks so you'll be doing a lot of heavy lifts at awkward angles which itself can cause all sorts of injuries from strained muscles. There's also the constant risk of having your hands and feet crushed. You'll be wearing steel cap boots most of the time but they only protect your toes and do nothing if some pushes a heavy flight case into your ankle. Most injuries happen because of someone else's carelessness too so there's only so much you can do to avoid it. You get a wide range of personalities working as crew and crew boss's and it's inevitable you'll have to work with difficult and occasionally very hostile characters. If you work hard and don't complain too much you'll get on okay with most people but given you'll be working long hours with lots of high risk jobs happening around you, chances are someones going to have a go at you at some point. Unlike office jobs nobodies going to care if you report a crew boss was rude or insulting or that a lighting tech called you a bad word. Every once in a blue moon physical fights brake out and while it's not necessarily condoned, often those guys will just be left off jobs for a while before bringing them back on. There's a lot of favouritism shown by the head office when offering jobs. Crew members that spend all their time sucking up to head office and crew boss's will get offered a lot more easy shifts despite them being slow and lazy on larger shifts. It's also happened that people have been given a crew boss role on smaller calls despite not being a good leader, simply because they're friendly with the right people. I've heard reports from other crew members that the office has tried to pressure them into taking jobs they didn't want to do by threatening to not offer them shifts. The work is spread across the city so depending on the transport links where you live some jobs will take you a lot time to get to and from.