To throw a wrench into the discussion - or not - there is no ASM. About half the crew are full-time freelance professionals, while the other half are not. We are not a teaching facility, persay, though situations like these tend to provide lessons all their own. While a system was in place and had worked through up until the 2nd to last performance, obviously something went wrong this one time.
I was not interested in playing the blame game and I agree that fault for failing to have a back-up plan for missing props/costumes falls squarely on my shoulders. However, I was appalled by the fact that the items in question exchanged so many hands without alarms going off, or if they did that shoulders were shrugged and the items passed along as-is. I think we've all had moments in our careers where we got too comfortable with our tracks and looked over *that one thing* that we were sure we covered - in this case she swears she did the preset, even though it was clear she didn't. Did she have a preset list? Yes. Did she use it? No, she got comfortable with the routine, and her co-workers, as back-up check system, failed too.
What really hit me, and why I brought it forward for discussion here, was the way that no one came forward to claim responsibility for their part in the situation. Not fault, but responsibility. I was waiting for that one person out of our student-run crew (college, mostly) to come forward as a shining example, and it didn't happen. That's the kind of thing I keep a mental checklist of - who takes the most care of their reputation. I want to rehire people that own up quickly and move past it, not someone who says, "I swear I did the preset, maybe someone took them off the hangers."