host/hostess

party host

Geeks Who Drink

When you are hired, they act like you're getting paid $50 for 2 hours. It's a deceptive tactic that gets enthusiastic people who want to do this gig in the door.

Realistically, you're going to be making a lot less, for a lot of reasons.

- Printing is poorly-compensated. If you forget to keep track of it and submit it via a bizarre system that's separate from the regular pay system, then you'll get paid nothing for it, meaning you're paying out-of-pocket.

- Prep is extensive if you're in a venue that uses PowerPoint. The PowerPoint they provide contains quizmaster-only info that you have to redact by hand. On top of that, they often upload PPTs full of errors so you might have to make changes to it right before quiz.

- If you're in a PPT/video venue, they may or may not have an HDMI cable that's long enough and/or compatible with your laptop. Be prepared to buy a long HDMI cable, HDMI extender, and/or HDMI adapter.
- PPT/video aside, you still have to do a LOT of prep (script-reading/rehearsing, banter/joke ideas, error-fixing).

- They don't supply the "extra" things that make quiz run well, like pencil sharpeners (crucial if you want happy quizzers), grading pens (which make scoring go faster by providing a visual contrast), a backup sound mixer/AV cables to keep on you just in case (crucial if you want to actually run quiz at a venue where something is broken), Spotify account compensation (even though you're obligated to play music to fill dead air, and who pirates music anymore?), etc.

- Did I mention their errors? Downloading the quiz files when they are posted is a surefire recipe for having to re-download and/or re-print everything. Since this is a side-gig and not a full-time day job, the fact that you have to make so many changes right before quiz is really unconscionable on their part, since it means you have to take time out of your day job to do it. Doing your prep ahead of time like a responsible person is a fool's errand. Such a frustrating waste of time.

- If you substitute at a venue, you may or may not get comprehensible instructions as to how to run quiz at that venue. I've had to straight-up beg  regular QMs to get answers to such utterly basic questions as "do you run PPT/video at this venue?" and hear rants from them about how much substitutes suck (I wonder why that is?). Irresponsible regular QMs face no meaningful consequences for this sort of behavior towards substitutes.

- All that aside, if you have a lot of quizzers and/or a venue with tricky setup, you're not going to be able to set up, run quiz, and tidy up within 2 hours. It's going to be more like 3 hours.

- In addition to quiz itself and setup and teardown, you're supposed to socialize with venue staff and quizzers. If you do that before and after quiz, you're looking at 3.5-4 hours.

- Depending on the venue, you may have to pay for parking and they don't pay you back for it. Gas isn't compensated either.

- The $25 bar tab doesn't take into account the price differences nationwide for food and drinks. If the event is at a drinks-only venue and you don't drink (or shouldn't be drinking since you drove there), it's useless. You're not supposed to use it for to-go orders, merch, or other people, either. Oh, and they tell you to tip.

This isn't really an expense but I must say that the chaperone night training is a joke. They don't really care about the quality of who does training; anyone who is willing can do it. My trainer, a guy who is younger than me (relevant because I'm not a man and not only am I older than him, I had far more public speaking/performance experience than him years before I got started at GWD) gave me advice to do things that were inefficient at best, downright against GWD rules at worst. I completely ignored his condescending advice to actually become a good QM.

So why do I do it? It forces me to leave my house and engage in light, fun social interaction. I also love public speaking and have no other consistent outlet for it. Basically, I consider it a way to go out and socialize without losing money. I can't say I really make any money off it since I am an organized, meticulous, and well-received QM who does and buys all the allegedly "optional" stuff that makes quiz run well, quizzers happy, and venues retain their contracts.

Geeks who Drink is definitely a labor of love as they say, it can be very fun and rewarding depending on your venue. 

If your venue is popular, (15+ teams a week) the night can fly by quickly. But it doesn't only depend on your teams but also on your relationship with the bar-staff. Mine is generally quite good so not a problem but at my other venue it's not as popular and I don't have as good a relationship with the bar-staff so it's not as pleasant of an experience.

Either way, it's a fun $50 a night gig. The problems being:

1. No chance for advancement, you're basically locked in where you're hired. I did apply to be a writer, and wrote 2 audition rounds. I was not actually given feedback on what was wrong just told "not what we are looking for". It's confusing feedback, because the rounds that are published are often full of grammatical errors or just... odd choices for rounds. You do have sports and video rounds you can sub in, which I often have to do because some of the gimmicks are a real stretch on these rounds. 

Either way, lack of job advancement and salary raises is a really annoyance. Like I said at the beginning, labor of love not bringing home the bacon here.

2. Training is not properly compensated. If you are chosen to train a new person you aren't compensated extra but actually less as you "split" the $25 bar tab. So in effect, for doing extra work (IE hosting and mentoring) you are making less money. Which seems crazy to me.

3. Management is not readily accessible, due to timezone differences. I understand they are also working from a part time viewpoint like me but I wish there was more cohesion. 

4. Lack of "community", there used to be a Facebook page for GWD QM's to vent their annoyances and talk among each other to seek guidance but lately that has been "corporatized" in that there is now a moderator that filters the posts that get posted. So instead of having a transparent discussion, you're often instead forwarded to your manager leading to the vicious cycle of #3. 

5. Printing compensation is a joke and a scam, seriously. You are expected to print out the quiz for the evening, and then a visual round. They do not reimburse for total costs of this, and instead hide it behind a spreadsheet you submit once every 3 months for not the actual amount. This has got to be one of my biggest annoyances with the company. You will not break-even from printing! Maybe if you piggyback off your real jobs printer you can otherwise no, you're gonna lose money. I seriously wish this was automated and paid back fairly. 


Overall it is a fun side job, with a lot of annoyances. Thankfully the annoyances can be fixed and it can be rewarding especially for public speaking experience which I took it as.

Working for Geeks Who Drink, or any company like this, you really have to love it. That, or you have to be the kind of person who can really start your engine on those days when you don't feel like being "on". The company has a culture of encouraging "gentle abuse" between host and audience, and you have to be ready for that kind of interaction, whether you're in the mood or not. This is obvious. I only say this because if this is the kind of thing you are interested in doing because you think it would be "fun", you're right. But it's a surprising amount of work, and that work isn't for everybody.

The most problematic aspect of Geeks Who Drink is the lack internal support. In terms of leadership, it's not fully clear who's who as far as hierarchy. If you need this kind of structure, you will find this frustrating, particularly when you consider that you can do an entire year of quizzes and the extent of your direct interaction with the company will come in the form of emails. Certainly, there are social events for employees, but the employer/employee relationship lacks, and that results in a sort of...let's call it a free for all.

When I say free for all, I mean that there are channels for communication between hosts all over the country, namely a couple Facebook groups used to interact, but these are largely not moderated and can turn a little abusive. Often, hosts have voiced concerns and questions in these forums and have been shouted down for asking something "stupid", which does not foster the idea of equality between employees. Even when this behavior is addressed, it is equally met with a sort of "if you don't like it, you're weak" mentality.

There is a learned arrogance in the staff--sort of an idea that hosting a pub quiz is the same thing as having power. And while you have to have kind of a thick skin to endure running a show at a bar, the defensiveness and rudeness that's part of the culture, it carries over into day to day interaction within the company, and that can be very off-putting for new hires and veterans alike.

Not to go on too long, but there is also the idea that if a venue is failing due to low turnout, you as the host are almost exclusively responsible for explaining why. Some people in the company simply do not accept that some bars just aren't trivia places--this is not from my own experience, but my observation.

Incredible opportunity to brush up on your public speaking skills and TONS of fun. The little bit of extra money for something so fun is great, and the bar tab (if you're eligible in your state) is sometimes even better. I really can't overstate how much FUN hosting quiz can be for a certain personality type.

However: There has been a recent decline in the quality of communication between Staffing Manager's and QM's. This, I think, is because of how overworked they clearly are and no real fault of their own -- they are simply in charge of too many regions and have too many responsibilities within those regions. This has led to a significant decline in the amount of faith many of us have had in GWD to maintain a quality product.

The money is nice, but in the years since I've been here, $50/quiz is simply not what it used to be. An inflation-based raise, or an easier track to making more per-quiz (it currently stands at a raise after you've hosted 250, I believe) is desperately needed.

The primary reason this raise is needed is because of the amount of technically off-the-clock work this job requires of you. When accepting the job, you're told you're being paid $25/hr to host a two hour quiz. The amount of prep that goes into hosting a quiz, however, includes: Reviewing the quiz in advance of your game, printing out the quiz and the visual rounds YOURSELF (for which you're offered a fairly paltry ink reimbursement, another major issue with the company), setting up sound, breaking everything down at the end of the night, and cleaning the GWD specific stuff (pencils, answer packets, etc) off of tables. Weekly, I'd say the job requires closer to 4-5 hours a week of work. This isn't bad, but $10/hr falls way BEHIND the minimum wage in many states increasingly these days.

Stop working your full time employees to death. Increase the pay of your QM's and find a way to require them to spend less of their own money on hosting YOUR events. If you can't pull this off, unionization becomes increasingly more inevitable.

Being a quizmaster rocks. It's a blast and I love returning to my regulars every week, and if you're into that kind of thing, it's really the best quiz around. I treat it less like a side-gig than a fun hobby that gives me a little extra spending money.

But no matter how fun it is, labor is labor, and you are really undercompensated for the work that you do. They say it's "$50 for a two hour quiz," but that's not counting reading over the quiz, organizing audio and video and possibly a powerpoint, setting up AV, putting everything away, and writing a blog post, nevermind all the other responsibilities you may have. For lots of QMs, it can end up at or even below minimum wage, depending on where they live. 

Writers might have it worse — If someone writes a round which will get played in hundreds of venues across the country, they only get $20, and a quality round takes more than a few hours to craft.

Management turnover is super high depending on region, too, and by my understanding a lot of the staff are also super underpaid. It's not always the case, but it often seems like regional managers don't have much regard for the QMs security — there have been countless examples of, say, QMs finding out that their quiz is permanently cancelled from the quizzer email list before they hear from the manager, and of QMs getting fired or switched out with little to no warning and for seemingly arbitrary reasons. It doesn't seem like they really have your interests in mind, even though you ARE quiz.

It's still worth it. You should do it. We all love the hosting quiz. But management knows that — they know that demand is high for the gig and that they can get away with not treating talent as well as they should, because we're easily replaceable.

Be prepared to adore quiz, and be prepared to be frustrated with management.

Easy gig, each quiz is 2 hours and you get a $25 bar tab. Pay is $50 per quiz.

I love my weekly quiz, it's a lot of fun. That said, this isn't my first trivia gig, and having seen other options I can point out the pros and cons:

PROS
Strong brand. People know GWD.

Plenty of willing substitutes if you are sick/can't make your quiz that week.

Lots of locations

Meet interesting people and see fun bars/establishments.

You manage yourself, more or less. 

CONS
No incentive to grow your quiz. My previous gigs offered tiered payments depending on how many teams played your quiz:  1-5 teams $50, 6-10 teams $65, etc. This made the quizmaster want to build their quiz night. Getting paid $50 whether I have 2 teams or 25 teams doesn't really incentivize promoting on social media, going the extra mile, etc.

Reimbursements. I have Spotify Premium because of this job, and it would be nice to be reimbursed the $10/month. We are also responsible for printing visual rounds, and the reimbursement process is not only inefficient, but the reimbursement rate doesn't cover the cost  of printing at staples/kinkos.



All in all, if you want to make a quick 50 bucks and have a few beers on the house every week then this is a fun gig. It's fun to get in front of people and talk, joke, and do the whole quiz thing. It's fun to control the music in the bar and make everyone listen to the music you want to listen to. It's worth it. 

But - you'd think a major player like GWD would be able to support their quizmasters a bit more. When all is said and done my $50 quiz probably ends up being more like $40 when accounting for gas, printing, and Spotify subscription. Like I said, management would see better QM talent (and higher turnout) if they paid according to how many teams show up; not a flat $50.

If someone asks if I enjoy working as a Quizmaster at Geeks Who Drink, I enthusiastically tell them yes. I really do. But there's a lot of caveats to that.

One: It's run and all the hosts enjoy doing it as a side gig
Two: Because of number 1, they can get away with relatively poor compensation.

So lets start with the math. The ads say you get paid $50 for 2 hours of work, which sounds AWESOME, but you're supposed to arrive 30 minutes before(being asked to arrive before your shift means your shift is longer) your shift and prep your night in advance. You're doing 2 hours of showtime, but to prep for it(and do teardown, writing a recap, etc) you're at about 3 hours. Some factors swing this in either direction. Still $50 for 3 hours is not bad for what you're really doing. (You do not need to write your own material, which is HUGE)

But $50 per night is where you stay, until you do 250 regular events. That's about 5 years if you're doing one per week, which is where most people are. Interestingly, it's not merit based. You get paid the same no matter how large of a crowd you attract, no matter how well your client(the bar) thinks you're doing or by any other measure.

And if your venue is really crowded they bring on a second set of hands to help out...at $25 per night. Sure that second set of hands isn't MCing the night and doesn't need to do prepwork, but they're still working and $12.50/hr is below minimum wage in some markets. Even if someone accepts it, it's still exploitative to pay someone below the minimum.

SO

If you think hosting is good for you, do it. Just be aware of your own value.  Be aware that while it's a fun job, it's still a job. You will have fun. You will make friends. You will have a solid(if geographically disparate) community of awesome coworkers.

I hosted for Geeks Who Drink for 3 years prior to the pandemic. Training was done over a video call and then I never heard from anyone unless they were correcting me on a recap submission.
We were expected to hire and partially train our own substitute if we were not available to host our scheduled show. 
The audio equipment at the first venue I hosted was busted from the time I took it over until the inevitable cancellation. I was given no support during that year span. They randomly texted me telling me the venue was no longer using Geeks but I was picked up at another venue the next day. That was because of me and had nothing to do with anyone in the Geeks office. I would have been better off starting my own trivia company.
I hosted at the second venue for 2 years. We stopped because of the pandemic. During that entire span I had no idea who my manager was or a single name of anyone in the Geeks office. The venue was also highly upset that Geeks never communicated with them.
The content was overly wordy and meant to sound smart but falls flat at a certain point.
They may have changed over the years but I never returned to host for them after the pandemic. Too many trivia companies to settle for this lack of support.

Being a quizmaster is a great experience if you're someone who finds reward in being a part of a community of like-minded individuals, and seek an outlet for your Type A personality to perform. It's good that you find reward in that, because other than that it's very much a gig job for once or twice a week, and one that doesn't exactly pay minimum wage in markets that have reached $15/hour. Officially it's a two-hour show, but by the time you factor in prep, setup, breakdown, and the blog you have to write (even though nobody reads it) most hosts are putting in 3.5-4 hours, and several who go above and beyond do more than that. Oh, and you have to print some of your own materials, but won't get reimbursed the full amount of what it costs to print them.

For $50 and a bar tab, if you're just looking to make money, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. But if you want a performance gig, one that comes with an incredible national network of friends and the cachet of being the cool person in the limelight with a legion of devoted followers who come back to see you every week, you'll be hard-pressed to find something as fun and emotionally rewarding as being a Geeks Who Drink quizmaster.

I honestly don't know what management was thinking asking to review them here.  We don't get fully reimbursed for color printing.  We're expected to play music during breaks and questions, yet Spotify isn't reimbursed.  They ask us to spend our own money for decoration/prizes in order to be picked for Themed Quizzes or Private Events, which pay more.  Those forced to work in a PointPoint venue will have trouble getting shifts covered when sick, and put in more effort which knocks the hourly pay way down.  QMs are GWD's greatest asset, yet they treat us horribly.  Even internal posting jobs are paid so poorly that the turnover is excessive.  There's no behind the scenes support.  There's absolutely no consistency in training.  We have some superb QMs and some horrible ones.  Once hired, you can be as great or awful as you want.  They tell us blogging weekly is required to get paid, yet there are many QMs in my area who only sporadically blog.  Those that actually care about their quizzers/venue will privately contact the good QMs to get shifts covered.  Why do I keep doing it?  I enjoy the venue staff and quizzers.  But burnout is a serious problem.

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