Love him or hate him, he’s an American Icon and if you had the opportunity to be a part of his show (and the tickets are free!) you’d take it.
So that’s what we did yesterday. Took the 11:30am train to the city to queue up by 2:00 for a 4:30 start.
I know – some of you are thinking – but wait! It’s Late Night with David Letterman! Well…..eventually.
Turns out the audience is a big part of the show. The historic Ed Sullivan theatre is not that big – I’m gonna say it maybe seats 400 people. So we have to SOUND big and happy and enthusiastic and laugh heartily and NEVER make that “Whoo Whoo” or dreaded Arsenio Hall noise. There were microphones hanging quite low to pick up audience laughter – not built for primal screeching.
We were literally trained, tested, and coached by Pages before entering the theatre. They were wonderful. They make it all happen in my opinion. Young enthusiastic, caring kids whose only job is to make sure that everyone has a good time, they follow some basic rules and we work together to make a one hour production perfect. They said things like “David is Simon – You are Garfunkel. David is Elton John – You are his Bernie Taupin. You’re a team. He can’t do this show without you.”
That naturally got me thinking about the branch “experience.” The branch is our stage, and each day before those doors open, do we get the performers pumped up? Remind them what we are about to do and why it’s important?
When the show was over Dave thanked us all for coming and the Pages lined up at the exits and thanked us all for a wonderful performance.
When’s the last time we said that to our tellers?
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July 12, 2009 at 3:28 pm
shari storm
I once went to a taping of a talk show and they filmed us while we watched all this weird stuff – funny stuff, gross stuff. Then, when they needed a certain reaction, they cut to the pre-filmed clips of us and inserted those in the right places. So, for example, the interviewer had a guy talking about something icky, and they showed my facial expression as it had been when I had seen a film clip of maggots eating a snail. Weird, huh?
Has nothing to do with tellers, but I wanted to share the story.
Tell Mark he’s looking good 🙂
July 21, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Cece
I’m not making a teller comment either, but I’ve been to Dave 3 times, and each was a special experience all its own. Jack Hanna the Animal Guy with a bald eagle flying over ours heads and my dad and I caught in the action on tv, Brittany Spears from the third or fourth row just as she was breaking into big fame, and Kate Capshaw, Spielberg’s wife, who Dave got to call her husband live on a set somewhere remote.
Come to think of it, we DO do the “performance pump up” thing where I work – in stand-up meetings some mornings (too busy to have real ones, so the quick message gets out in ten minutes or less on the floor in the middle of the office) doing exactly that – reminding everyone why we are there, that no matter what is going on we need to be showing up for our (members) families every day in the best way possible doing the best work we can do.