I have, like probably many in here, a hell of a lot of bad experiences with sound guys and sound checks. For me, a sound check CAN be useful, but 90% of the time it's a major waste of time. I'm more concerned about the order of appearance, where's are shit! and when do we get on. You can have a pretty good impression of the kind of sound guy you are gonna deal with just by looking at his t-shirt. If it's a RUSH t-shirt... you're in for trouble. We used to have all kindsa remarks on our equipement being shitty and mot tuned and shit... but none of this matters as it's the performance that's important... not the sound man's job, for me at least.
I've known a couple great sound guys in my town and would sigh of relief when I got to the club and saw them. I thought to myself "great! easy night!"... as when I didn't know the guy and he was clearly into reggae... I knew we'd have troubles. I'm always asked to keep the amps on stage low so that he could have "room" to play with them on his console... but come show time... I jack my amp right back up. Then, you're in control, he can't do anything else but cut the mics.
Lastly, I always sacrifice our first song. I pick one that's ok, but not killer. Usually it goes to shit because of the sound man. Then jack up your amps and start playing for real. It's fucking funny to see the guy jump on his console, head down, trying to rectify what's going "wrong".