Coin Op-The Comic

Hey everyone, seems a few people over at ColoringDragons.com noticed I haven't posted anything up here lately....Well stand back guys.....blog entry coming.

One of my duties working at the skating rink is to run parties for the many kids that come through my doors. And to give you a rough idea of what I must do. I greet the party, get a food order, make 4 pizzas (not just cook, MAKE 4 pizzas), hand skates to kids, make sure the playlist is still "kid friendly" (no profanity, no suggestive lyrics), serve pizza and drinks, clean up after the party, clean up the kitchen, take the trash this party makes (this is four 60 gallon trash cans mind you). AND get everything ready for the sessions that are open to the public, which I usually get 5 minutes since the party thinks that a package that runs for 1 1/2 hours means they can stay for 25 minutes to socialize with the parents who dropped off their kids. And I do these parties by myself....no assistance from anyone.

Now for the most part I do this with a smile on my face. Part of it being the fact that this is generally an easy and fun job. And the other part has something to do with something called tips. Once upon a time, I used to get anywhere from $5 - $20 for the work I do. And for the last 20 parties, I have received only one tip, and it wasn't even in American currency. No complaints on that though, he found out I collect foreign currency and he paid me 350 Iraqi dinars (old currency with Saddam's portrait on them) and 50 dinars (the stuff they're using now, post-Saddam).

But going back to the point, with all I do for these parties, I would think some parents would be a little more generous about the fact I literally run at times to get a lot of this done for them. And no one has complained to me and more importantly, no one has called my boss and complained to him. I receive compliments from my parties, yet I have not even been offered a slice of cake from a party. Now if you go to a restaurant, and someone serves you food...most of you leave a tip. I do the same services, for a longer amount of time, am exclusive to your party, and I add on other services that servers do not do. I don't wish to take away from the food service guys, most of them have to put up with a lot of crap sometimes....but I'm getting really bitter towards parents of birthday kids.

It got to the point where I started brushing off my parties to other people. I'm getting very, violently angry with parents who just leave without leaving anything monetary. Of course the parties I'm brushing off, are leaving tips for my co-workers and those co-workers openly admit that they think I do too much for parties and believe that I should just do the basics and not care anymore.

Yeah, that really didn't help me much.

Oh well, just leaves me to fend for myself in other ways.

Thanks for taking the time to read...
I'm still here, just not as vocal.
Dan