Spring Break 2014: TreeTop

And now we've come full-circle. I hope you've enjoyed my (fairly regular) posts the past few days! As it's been Spring Break, I've had time to sit down and catch up on some blogging. Some of these posts were written in pieces over several days, and by the time I go back to school on Monday, I hope to have a good stack of "Scheduled" posts sitting in my account. It's been far too long since I had a good backlog of posts! I know, I know - it sucks reading pre-written material. Have no fear! I'll still write fresh things when I get around to it. Sometimes, though, I'm not able to get around to it because of...school!

Anyway, now that I'm back in Chelsea, I'm also back to work. My first (full) day at TreeTop, in the midst of the crisis that is Spring Break in Shelby County, went a little like this...

I'm scheduled to show up to work at 9:30 a.m., which doesn't really make sense because the place doesn't open 'til 10:00, and I'm prize center - I'm not doing anything that would require me to be there early. If I were café, Go Karts, or a manager, I'd understand being there early. But just for prize center? I guess I could restock...

...If I could even get in the door. When I pull up at 9:20, the whole place is dark, and I can't even get into the parking lot because the gate is locked. No worries; I was going to park in the side lot anyways (because I was in my truck, and I knew we'd get busy and I'd have to just move it over there anyways and yadda yadda yadda...). But now I've got a problem. It's 9:20, I'm supposed to clock in at 9:30, and there's nobody around. Eventually, two other people show up (my coworkers) and they also park in the little lot next to me. At 9:32, a manager pulls up and unlocks the gate. We follow her into the building, and I'm able to clock in at 9:36. 

Okay. I'm clocked in. I head over to the prize center while my coworkers go and do other things. I turn around and find that there's a lady standing at the cash register...twenty minutes before we open. 

"Ma'am, we don't open for another twenty minutes."

"I know. I just want to get this done before y'all do."

I stare at her. "Ma'am, there's no cash drawer. We aren't open. The owner isn't even here yet. The cashier's in the café finishing up her Taco Bell breakfast."

The lady narrows her eyes, and I scamper off in search of the cashier, who gets upset when I tell her that she has to stop eating and go deal with the angry old woman at the register. She basically repeats the same things I said, and the lady leaves, to wait in her car until we do open. The cashier locks the doors behind her. 

I spend the first two hours of my shift basically tidying up and restocking the shelves and the wall, because nobody comes to prize center at all. I get maybe three people in those first three hours, and they're all from the same family. Eventually, I have a posse of about three people around me, and we're able to deal with the crowd once they do come around. We have both cash registers running non-stop at this time, too: the line never gets lower than fifteen people deep until about six o'clock that night.

At around two, I'm able to take my break. I have a quick lunch and get back to the prize, because I don't want to leave the newbies there too long by themselves. They might get eaten.

It sincerely amazes me that people complain about long lines at places like this. I mean, it's SPRING BREAK. Other families want to get out and have fun, too! Heaven forbid you all decide to go to the ONLY ARCADE AROUND during spring break! And then complain about the lines! You're not the only ones that are entitled to get out!

I had to get the manager to do refunds for at least three people today, because people didn't understand the concept of "No refunds," "No substitutions," and/or "The line for [attraction] may be over 40 minutes long. Plan accordingly when buying the hour/two-hour/three-hour unlimited combos!" signs. They also don't listen to the cashiers say, "The Spring Break combo specials expire at the end of the day!" (There's also a note on the advertisements that say this.) People just amaze me.

Anyways, I'm going to quit ranting about the stupidity of humanity now before it threatens to overwhelm me. I've got a ten hour shift tomorrow, and I need to rest up for it so I don't snap and kill somebody. Wish me luck!

Do you work in a retail store during the holidays? Do you work at some sort of arcade, and thus feel my pain? What are your strategies to get through it?