Encountered what I believe to be an interesting difference in perspective between my friend and I.

Over the years, she's done a few jobs with a specific touring company. One tour she did with them she considered a particularly transformative experience - enough to get her first "tour tattoo." Because the company has quite a large profile when it comes to entertainment logistics, most notably its own fleet of private jets, she's always said I might do well there.

I know another woman who was on one of the same tours as my friend for this other company. She didn't say much about it, just that the vibe was weird and that she liked touring with me much better. #EgoBoost

Since I'm currently looking to fill in my calendar, my friend took the opportunity to reach out to her main contact at the company to get us connected. I don't know the exact words he said, but she was very bothered by the cold tone he took with her essentially communicating that while yes they had lots of business and yes they were looking for people, he no longer looked at resumes and instead only took referrals.

I pointed out that it was a strange response because what she was doing was quite literally the definition of a referral. Wanting to confirm she was still on good standing with the company she reached out again for clarification. He said that while she herself is good, he's not going to take a referral from her.

I said his attitude kinda stinks of bro energy. She quickly assured me that women do reach high positions there and that she was never disrespected. I pointed out that it sounds like he did kind of disrespect her by saying yeah she's a fine crew member but not held in high enough esteem to even entertain the thought of considering a referral that came from her. She insists he must have his reasons even though I was correct in that "he is rather masc" which I found to be an interesting word choice from her.

Anyway, doesn't make much difference to me. Just has me thinking of different levels of tolerance when it comes to this kind of thing. The other woman she worked with obviously felt it. Whatever my friend went through on that tour I figure she interpreted as a bit of a rite of passage. I know this because after she did that particular tour and ended up on my crew once again, she got very upset when a problem came up at a venue and I didn't publicly shout at this venue guy in front of everyone until I got my way and wasn't cursing up a storm in the production office when I noticed a few line items were clearly wrong on a show settlement.

It was the first time she'd ever been genuinely upset with me so I explained to her that I approached the venue guy privately as work on stage continued, spoke to him to explain his error, and secured the thing that we needed. I also said that for the settlement, I simply looped in the Live Nation rep, presented my reasoning for why the settlement was flawed, and it was rectified without another word from the actual venue.

She said that the tour manager at this other company was always throwing his weight around, always yelling at people, and she found it desirable to present that type of show of force. I said that if he was screaming at people at every single tour stop it means he probably wasn't that good at his job because sure, things go wrong on the road, but the odds of every single venue being off their game is quite slim.

I should also note that this was the first tour that happened for her after she gathered herself up enough to walk out on her fiancee who was also routinely horrible to her.