Hidden Costs

This article seems particularly topical to us: it seems that all States that have wanted to forget these famous hidden costs are paying blood money for it.

As far as a theatre is concerned, the impact is surely less important. Nevertheless: Reality has come back to teach us that hiding is paid for at the highest price.

The principle of hidden costs, in management – in economics – is to establish the real set of costs of a business – without forgetting everything we don’t want to see – or think we can forget.

This will most often be reflected in the condition of the equipment. Not repairing it, not taking proper care of it – forgetting to have employees who manage maintenance as best they can, and you can be sure that you will have to buy and buy again.

Try not to hide anything from the employees – but of course you have to consider the effects of the work required on the staff.

As far as personnel are concerned, working in a theatre is special:
In addition to your normal working hours, you have to be part of the “little hands” for the evenings of performances, to prepare for Festivals, Events, not wondering what time we go to bed, or if our children are well…
Those who have the hardest hours are the technicians, who have to take the show apart after the performance, so that the next morning the place is empty and clean.
Given the price of the material they have in their hands & forgetting the responsibility they are entrusted with is stupidity.

So if you want a company like a theatre – as huge as Altair wants it to be – to function at its best, you must not forget all the work of those who are not the ‘stars’, nor the financiers – but without whom everyone breaks.
In order for them to be enthusiastic – in order for them to work fast and well – you have to pay. You have to recognize the hard hours. The hours of maximum stress and not hiding behind the too pathetic: they chose this job …
This for the technicians, engineers, of both Altair – the virtual theatre will be just as stressful as the real one – it will be live too.

For those who maintain, who fill the fridge, who clean, who wear out their backs we will have to pay them well.
Other theatres do this little or badly. And curiously, the less well the employees are treated, the less good the work is.
As a result, the spectators leave – and their money with them.

Business management is often reminiscent of Ali Baba’s thieves: there is a huge cave where treasures snatched from others are stored. And these treasures are of no use at all.

Since I want Altair to work at full capacity, I refuse to use the cave to store the money Altair has earned.
I want that money to go mainly to those who make the theatre shine. So that they can go home and all their acquaintances dream of coming to work with us.
It’s cheaper than communicating people who are 20 years late, who only serve to hide the scrap. Since we can’t always hide what is broken, it was money misused.

Let me share with you the beautiful Arabic music, to meditate on Ali Baba’s teachings.

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Featured Image : Detail of a painting by Ellie Hesse : Ali Baba & Few Thieves – 2018