This year I decided to volunteer because Tiffany volunteers every year and highly recommended it. Since it was my first time out, I didn't want to be working in a vendor booth, so signed up for token sales. As a volunteer, you get a free ticket that gets you in for the whole weekend (well, for the part you aren't working at least!) plus they throw a wicked party at the end.
Originally the shifts were supposed to be about 4 hours, but because the festival is only open for 5 hours on the Friday our shifts were extended to 6 hours. No big deal. I arrived at 2:00, and was put to work by about 2:05. Nothing difficult though....just putting together pre-packaged bags of tokens to help speed up the sales process. Previous experience told the co-ordinators that most people buy in $20 or $40 increments so we wanted to be prepared.
By 3:00 they had us divided up into 8 teams of 2 and we were ready to roll. Previous years there has always been a giant gong show at the token booth, so this year they moved the booth a little further out and had 8 wickets running. It worked awesome!! No waits more than about 10 minutes this year!
I spent the first hour or so as the token bitch, then switched up partners and became the cash bitch. I like taking drunk people's money! :) Around 5:30 I got a break, so covered up my volunteer shirt and went in search of friends I had seen come through. I found neighbor Jen and she gave me a token so we could try out Steamworks "great pumpkin ale"...one of my faves which generally runs out by the time I get to it. Yum!!
Back to my shift at 6:00 where I got picked to help the coordinator with a couple of cash runs. All very covert, with two of my very own security escorts! I felt very important!!!
I got back and was asked if I wanted to do cash again so got myself another new partner and went back to it. Around 7:00 the crowd really petered out, but then we got the folks that just needed another $5 worth to get them through. This carried on non-stop until we sent security to put a stop to the line just after 7:30. We had so much fun even though we were working our asses of. Tipsy people are hilarious when trying to figure out how many more beers they can cram into 45 minutes. And it helps that a girl gave us a $10 tip! Wooooooo!
They gave us the last half hour to cover up and enjoy a tiny bit more of the festival. I found a couple of friends out in the crowd and just relaxed a bit. Then we did a mad dash to pick up all of the token buckets from the booths....and that was it!!
I totally had fun...even though I was really working the whole time. Sorta reminded me why I worked in customer service for so long...if I'm not totally exhausted I actually enjoy it. Too bad I always felt exhausted, overworked and underpaid.
2 comments:
OOH, it sounds like a blast!!!
I always felt that way in customer service,but every once in a while I work a shift at the retail end of my company and I love it...not that I would go back to it on a daily basis!!!
Plus, drunk people are always fun!
My hubby and dad had a fab time also. Zach threw up on himself and was in bed by 8. You know you had a good time when.......
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