As you may or may not know, depending on if you read this blog with any amount of regularity, I have been working off site during October. And when I say "Off Site" what I really mean is Gardner Village. Plus I did some other stuff, (ski fans, Warren Miller's "Dynasty" is still good old fashioned ski-porn, but it won't get you nearly as stoked for the season to begin as, say "Children of Winter Never Grow Old," and it won't induce a skigasm. In other words, on a scale from "Someone please kill me I can't stand anymore" to "Awesomesauce!" it's a "Meh~" which is somewhere in the middle, before "Yay!" but after "Bleh." Plus some sick bastard kept coughing in our direction while we were taking the Trax to Abravanel Hall and now I have a cold. Just. What. I . Needed.)
Anyway, back to Gardner Village, which is what I think today's blog was supposed to be about. I'm a little fuzzy right now.
The parameters of Gardner changed this year. Instead of us using their property and taking care of all the Witch expenses, and keeping 100% of the proceeds, they wanted a cut, so they raised the price, spent a ton of money improving the back acreage we drive the tractor in, and changed the ride so instead of driving around with a witch on the hay trailer we drive the people out to the witch's house and then go back and pick them up. In other words, we are a weird rural Taxi service. But we still have to collect the cash from the people, and account for it. So, instead of selling "tickets," at first we just had them pay for the ride, then go through a gate and get on the hay wagon. Simplicity at its finest.
But, apparently the bean counters at Gardner were unhappy with this provincial method, so they came up with the idea of giving out rubber cockroaches as "tickets". The stager hands, preferably an adult in the group, the correct number of cockroaches matching the number of paying riders in each family, and then that person, upon arrival at the Witch's house, gives the cockroach "tickets" to the witch and the roaches are counted up at the end of the night.
Except it has yet to work out that way. Because sometimes the witches don't take the roaches, and people return with them, handing the yucky thing back to the stager saying, "She never asked for this so you can have it back." And frequently the passengers will lose their roach within seconds of it being handed to them and told, "Keep this and give it to the witch it's your ticket don't lose it," which means we have an unauthorized rubber roach hiding in the gravel. So, as a form of accounting, I do not recommend rubber cockroaches.
Being that one of us is on the tractor and the other of us is staging, we communicate via text messaging, which is often how Ro and I communicate daily anyway. So, here for your enjoyment are some of the messages we have sent in reference to Gardner:
Ro: You want to stage or drive tomorrow? I am good with either one I just want to know witch attire or farmer attire.
Ro: I am good either way.
Me: I drive U stage.
Ro: I think I was dumb and gave a roach to a babies Mom when the baby did not pay. (children 12 months and under ride for free)
Ro: Someone lost a roach, imagine that. I told them I could not replace it. So now what?
Me: It makes up for the roach you gave the baby. Roach accounting. It all evens out in the wash.
Me: (yesterday) Did U bring the gas can back with U Sat nite or do U want me to stop and fill mine on the way?
Me: I'm at grocery store you want anything 4 tonight?
Ro: No on gas. Yes for tonight, snacks and a water please.
(Later on)
Ro: I counted $*50 in 20's
Me: Really? $*50 in 20's? U R so special.
Me: U might wanna recount. F*KIN RAIN (with an hour to go until we finished, it started to rain )
Ro: Why?
Me: $*50 is not divisible by 20
Ro: Ya true ok I got 1 $50 bill but I meant big bills. Not counting change I have used.
Me: Ah ha.
Me: Y is it again = U take $ & I drive? Oh yeah, children (shudder)
Me: (watching Ro huddle under the canopy and snuggle up by the propane heated provided for the customers) Put on my cape if ur cold.
Ro: I'm not bad thanks we just got a few more minutes (in actuality we had 40 more minutes)
Ro: The skyline looks like snow!
Me: Snow! Bleh!
And of course, I dead-headed out to the house twice retrieving passengers, just before 8 pm which is when we quit for the evening, and upon my return there was a family who could not make up their *%^$&# minds if they wanted a ride or not and by then the rain was steady and cold. Finally, they decided to go, so by the time I was done dragging their asses out and back I was drenched even though I had earlier put on my Carhartt bibs and Sherpa windbreaker.
And no one even counted the cockroaches.
And now I'm going back to bed. After I run to Wal-Mart and buy "Transformers," I have a crush on Bumble Bee.
4 comments:
COCKROACHES!!! They sound as bad as the park. You collect the money, no we will and give out wrist bands. No, the wristbands were just for a big group today. Today you will give out stickers. Don't let the horses make apples on the road, people are walking on the road.
AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
But it was fun.
I met my Belle (and Bart, but he is not currently being pampered at my place!)
COCKROACHES?!? (Well, some of those drivers do resemble them, but those generally don't make it to the village)
It's a different ballgame when you allow someone else to set the margins. We never had a problem with a ticketless system, in fact I told many people we were a "green" ride ( and snicker at the overuse of that buzzword)But then you let someone else in and it just f**ks everything up.
I cannot imagine how the barn has managed to do this downtown for 25 years... oh yeah, there's no one to stick their face in it! That's how! Duh...
Okay, after Halloween, what do they do with the rubber roaches? Recycle them into flip flops? I guess the barn wants to keep on the good side of these guys, but . . .
You know, maybe in some places Halloween should be moved to mid-September, so as not to freeze the tookus off the drivers, and also not to interfere with the baseball season.
Soon we'll get to turn the AC off in the daytime. Save some money!
In this site is very nice , useful for me, i bookmarked your blog
Thanks
Post a Comment