Coin Op-The Comic

As most of you can plainly see, I'm not making my deadlines as well so I'm cutting it back to 3 updates a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I do have a few things to rant about, but I'm going to keep it to one topic today.

"Why do you have to be a rude little@$#$@!!!"

Yesterday (8/4/04) I had to deal with arguably the worst customer of my life.
I am not exaggerating in the least, she easily made my top 5 worst customers of all time.

Little tip, within the first 5 minutes of talking to you, I can determine if you are going to be nice or mean. And my attitude toward you will be set in those 5 minutes as well. For those of you who don't know, my day job is managing a roller skating rink. I do everything from scheduling groups to running each activity. There is nothing I am unable to do in this place (short of air conditioner repair). Now my "fun loving" customer comes in, and I'm expecting her and her group of 40 kids, who are scheduled to skate from 10:30-12:00. Seeing how they are all crammed into a 20x10 room, I ask if she would like to let the kids come on in while I find the woman who booked her group. Most everyone says "Sure." or "Thank You".

From this lady, I get, "I'd rather talk to someone in charge".

Right there, she set the tone for today and put me in a foul mood. So after walking over and getting MY boss, he comes out and has essentially the same conversation. And she is equally rude to him, and now BOTH MANAGMENT PERSONNEL are not happy. And I get to run laser tag games for this group.

If you have never played laser tag, let me give you a quick rundown. For my arena 12 people play at a time in a blacklit arena while shooting at each other with toy guns equipped with laser pointers. These players can be from 8 to 80, but usually the 10-25 age goes in for here.
Add a broken AC unit to this dark arena and I will be sweating after 30 minutes and I'm in there for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

I start by telling her that I can get groups of 12 into the arena. My boss told her it will be anywere from groups of 12-14 players at one time. She rounds up 15 kids after hearng our limits and asked "WHY CAN'T YOU GET ANY MORE IN?" She didn't like it too much after I explained how 15 is 3 more than 12, which is what I told her. So now she is in a very bad mood with me as well.

This group was scheduled to 12:00 noon and games go for about 20-30 minutes depending on how well behaved the kids are. So when 11:40 rolls around, I inform my customer that I'll be ready for the last group, she blows up at me. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE LAST GROUP? WE PAYED FOR ALL THE KIDS TO GO THROUGH AND YOU'RE TELLING ME 6 KIDS CAN'T PLAY NOW?!?!" I offer the standard, well, allow me to give free laser tag passes and skate passes to those kids who didn't get to play. "NO I WANT TO GO TALK TO YOUR MANAGER!!!" Unfortunately I didn't get to see that play out, but I since I had to stay 30 minutes late for one last game, I know that my boss lost that round.

All in all, the moral is pretty simple. "Get the stick out of your @$$ before we decide to cram other foreign objects in there with it!!!!"

Until I get arrested for beating up customers, I still remain
Roo