When you are good at a specific type of task, you can often turn it into a great job or use it for other types of benefits.

In this story, one young man is particularly gifted with electrical and technical skills that he used to help support the theater and auditorium at school. He was more of an expert than actual professionals due to how much time he spent working with the equipment.

When something went wrong during a performance, the theater director wouldn’t listen to him and insisted they needed to hire a professional.

As you’ll see in this story, that was the beginning of the end for the theater director’s career, but thankfully, the school principal was on the student’s side.

Let’s read all about it.

My school spends $1200 going behind my back … ends up and letting me get out of a week of classes.

So, this happened years ago (2009) when I was a junior in high school.

I was 16 at the time and a theater kid at my high school.

Specifically I was what we refered to as a techie, meaning that we did all the technical aspects of the show. Things like building the sets, lighting, sound, and makeup among other things.

Now my school was in a pretty affluent area (suburbs of L.A. we were near Malibu). Because of that the arts were a pretty big deal for the school and community.

Having a role like this can help you to find your place at a school.

I focused on the lighting aspect and really enjoyed it.

I was never really popular at school as I always felt out of place I grew up in a different area and did not know anyone.

Also my family didn’t really have money like everyone else, we lived in a trailer park, so I was self conscious about that.

Wow, he is really dedicated to doing his best at this task.

So, I kinda through my whole life into the theater. I normally would not leave school untill 11 or 12 at night since we were always either getting ready for a show or striking from the last show.

Since I spent more time in the theater then I did in class, I knew things about that building no one else in the school did. It got to the point where I was basically an employee for the school.

I ran every function which utilized the theater or auditorium and had keys to every building. Thinking back to it im not sure how legal it was.

Normally there are special lights used for theater but our director that year (it was her first year at the school) liked to add normal lamps and lights to the sets themselves.

It is really sad that some teachers can be like this. They are supposed to be positive role models.

She was a horrible person and verbally abusive to her students and actors, especially the tech side.

She hated me because I did everything I could to keep her away from my crew.

I could really look out for the actors but if she tried to yell at my crew I would intervene or they would walk away and tell her to take it up with me.

He has managed to make himself very important not just for the theater, but for the whole school.

By this time I had become the informal leader of the techies and nothing really could happen in the theater or auditorium since I was the only one who knew how to keep it all working.

I kept trying to explain to her that this was not good practices or probably even safe as I was not an electrician, we had an old system and I had to rewire stage pins (special plug/socket for stage lights as they draw far more power) to work with a regular 3 prong that you would use in the house.

There are ways to make a set look real without putting everyone in real danger.

She, however, really wanted the set to look like a real house so I followed her wishes and rigged it up (which involved a lot of cussing and one near death experience involving a 12 foot A frame, electricity and a lighting assistant to busy having fun with her girlfriend to turn the power off on the right switch)

Now this is where things started to go wrong.

Every light gets plugged in to a specific socket with a specific number which corresponds to a specific slider on our lighting board in the back. (Our board was an old mechanical one because the school didnt want to upgrade to the newer ones).

The person operating the electrical board will need to be extra careful.

If the slider was pushed to far up the normal Lamps (what we called bulbs) would burn out and cause the dimmer switch (think a big breaker) to flip.

My only solution to this was to put tape on the slider making sure it could not get above the point which would cause the breaker to flip.

This would normally work but since we would run a show for 4 weeks monday, Wednesday, Friday and two Saturday shows we were blowing through lamps and triping the dimmer switch once or twice a week.

On our final show closing night the dimmer switch triped and we had to call a 5 minute so I could fix it. Only this time, flipping the Dimmer back wasn’t returning power and worse all the other lights were out as well not just the I had wired myself.

It really seems like he is great at the job. Hopefully, he grew up to be an electrician or have another important career.

Pretty quickly I figured out the the issue wasn’t the dimmer switch itself and had to be something else since the whole box lost power.

I was pretty sure what the problem was but did not say anything yet as I hated this director and wanted to see what she would say.

He tried to warn her that the way she wanted things done was not safe or stable.

She started to yell and curse me out before I could explain.

Luckily the assistant principal was there and we were cool so he asked me what we needed to do.

I told him that I could probably fix it but I wasn’t sure how long it would take. While I had a pretty good idea what the issue was I didnt want to make promises I couldn’t keep.

She waited until the last performance to say she doesn’t trust him? That is just pathetic.

The director heard this and said she no longer trusted me with this theater and she wanted to hire a professional to look at the dimmer box. She was saying since I broke it I obviously did not know how to fix it.

I shurgged and said ok but a technician from the company is gonna be expensive and we have an old system. I offered to at least try first and maybe save the school money.

She flatly refused.

I’m sure the performers and the crowd were all disappointed.

So closing night for that show ended before intermission and the school refunded all the tickets.

That monday I learn she managed to convince the principal to hire the technician and that he will be there later that week (I dont remember the exact day).

She still trusts him enough to show the professional around.

So, I get pulled out of class to help show the technician the box explain what went wrong and help him if I could.

Once I show him the dimmer box he takes one look and says the company no longer makes that model and he has no Idea how to fix it.

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He spent 30 minutes or so playing around with it but couldn’t get it to work and honestly I dont think he cared that much.

That is a lot of wasted money. I wonder if the director’s leaving was voluntary or not.

After school, the principal said they ended up having to pay him $1200 and the director probably would not be coming back next year.

He also asked me of I could try to fix it.

I said yes but it might take me a few days and since rehearsals took place after school I could only work during class hours.

He excused me from all my classes.

He is a smart young man.

At this point I already knew what the problem was because I came in on sunday alone to test my theory.

See the building has two separate braker boxs. The main one everyone knows about which is in the back next to out panel saw, and the one only I knew about which was behind the dimmer box.

Since the dimmer box was bolted to wall no one bothered to check. I only knew because the year before I dropped a wrench behind it and had to unbolt it too get my wrench back.

I fixed the problem in less than an hour told the principal it would be a 2 or 3 days and just spent that time working in the theater messing around with my friends and getting a head start on the next show.

That is one smart kid who not only knew how to fix things, but also how to work the system to get out of class and enjoy himself. It is clear that he will go far in life.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose family says they support her art career, but they still don’t want to pay her for product.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this fun story.

I was wondering this exact same thing. Hopefully, he is doing well.

She should not be working in that position.

Why are some teachers and directors like this? Are they embarrassed that a student is good at something?

Here is a commenter who hopes that the student can turn this into a rewarding career.

This commenter never did anything quite so crazy at school.

Her pride cost the school a lot of money and wasted a lot of time. It seems that it all worked out for him, though, which is always nice to see. I hope he was able to take this experience and turn it into a career that he loves.