It is 100 percent okay to help your buddy to hang Christmas lights. It is less okay to help your buddy out with his bar band (95 percent okay), lighting the opening band if you’re already being paid to run lights for the headliner (85 percent okay), and helping out your local lighting vendor at a charity gig (60 percent okay). Church gigs are tougher (50 percent okay), and you should be even more reluctant to work for free if it’s a televangelist (those guys are loaded and they pay no taxes.) It is NOT okay to work for free on travel days, or if you’re not getting paid for overtime, or if the aforementioned opening band is unappreciative or makes demands. And make sure you don’t fall into the “eternally on-call salaried guy” trap. We are lighting technicians, not ambulance drivers. We get days off to go to the lake once in a while.
—Chris Lose, from “LD-at-Large,” PLSN, April 2016
