Stupid Guest Tricks

Hey everyone, the last week or two has been absolutely crazy! Soarin' is so short that I have worked 12 hour days since I assessed out last wednesday. SGs abound and have made my life very difficult. I try to keep on the smile as I love working the attraction, I just hate the guests sometimes.
I was assigned to Standby and had to do a height check on this kid. He wouldn't stand still long enough for me to measure him. His parents started cussing and swearing at me. Finally I was able to measure him and he passed. I let them in and the mom turned around and snottily said "Thank-you for being sooooo nice."

The next one, I was doing my S-walk inside the theater and I saw a girl crying. I asked her if she wanted to go, and her mother snapped back with "She's fine." I almost told the woman that I wasn't talking to her. After I asked again I continued my S-walk. When I was doing my hold walk I saw the girl crying harder and when I asked again if she wanted to go the mother said "I would appreciate not being asked the same question 20 freaking times". Finally grandma had the good sense to take the girl off the ride. That was so awkward.

I am actually scared of Standby and fastpass return because I have only worked there for a week and I am not 100% comfortable with dealing with guests. Hopefully it will get better.

Keep it up - it does get easier. At least it did for me. Eventually you sort of develop a sense of ownership of the ride, and even of the position you're currently filling. You start treating SGs like you would if they did something you didn't approve of in your own home. You stop allowing them to get to you and begin being the voice of authority. "I'm sorry ma'am but I have to get an accurate height on your child or he/she CANNOT RIDE. If you would help me, we'd do this faster!" or "For safety reasons we cannot allow a distraught child to ride, so the ride isn't going anywhere until you take her off. If she changes her mind at the exit, we can try again, but for now, please take her outside." You will probably get the same sarcastic results, but you won't take them seriously because you have your script, you've followed it, and anything they can't deal with is their problem, not yours!

What Jerks! :mad:
With Time, you will feel the feelings of confidence mentioned prior, but I can relate to how you feel when someone seems to place the reason for all their problems on you.
Hang in There! :)

[font="Palatino Linotype"]hang in there cmguy...you know your job where sg's don't...if some sg mom wants to terrorize her child and you can prevent that you've made a friend of the child...i can't stand it when parents drag their kids on rides that they don't want to go on (though i've been accused of doing that since my kids are now adults...one year they had someone in the armor in the hm here and my kids have never let me forget it...how was i to know someone was in there and was gonna jump out at us? it hadn't ever happened before)[/font]

CMGUY89 wrote: I was assigned to Standby and had to do a height check on this kid. He wouldn't stand still long enough for me to measure him. His parents started cussing and swearing at me. Finally I was able to measure him and he passed. I let them in and the mom turned around and snottily said "Thank-you for being sooooo nice."

This is the most stupidest thing I have ever heard. I swear parents suck, there is just no other world for it. The amount of atrocious parenting we get on a daily basis. The laziness of some parents just make you shake in pure fury. AHHHHH!!!! What absolutely KILLS ME is that this are the same people that dare to criticize others and pretend that they are the greatest parents on earth.

If they would bother to hold the child while you measure it, they would have passed a lot faster. What kind of a lesson they think they are teaching their child with swearing at you? What kind of respect do they teach their child to have for people's job? That right there is why kids are they way they are this days. Since adults can't respect other folks, what exactly makes them think that children will respect them when they grow up? I tell you what, nothing will ever make them do that and it's all parents fault. It absolutely bothers me that parents are so lazy and disrespectful, and then expect their kids to be good. Children are what you teach them.

Rant over. Sorry for using your thread to rant, but that really pissed me off. It is just too unfair.

Kids are like banks. Whatever you put into them, you get back ten years later with interest.

felinefan wrote:Kids are like banks. Whatever you put into them, you get back ten years later with interest.

[UNSPOKEN THOUGHT]Ten years of pizza? Ew.[/UNSPOKEN THOUGHT]

Hang in there, dude. It's guests like that give this site a reason for existing, eh, I'm sure as you get used to your new surroundings you'll adopt your own way of dealing with the SGs.

For Standby and Fastpass Return, just remember that most guests (yes, even the SGs lol) are frustrated with the situation, not you personally. Use a strong, authoratative voice, and if that doesn't work...well I did notice that WDW does have a much strong visible police presence than the DLR :twisted: .

oh don't let people like that get to you cmguy, you have waited so long for this. I hope things settle down and you feel more confident.

Reminds me of when I went to work for a mainframe computer company as a voice analyst. They thought they had huge problems. It took a couple of weeks to sort through everything and resolve all the problems. I went to the MIS director and told him everything was fixed and asked what else I could do.

He said the teleprocessing area in the data center was in big trouble so why don't you take a look at that. I'd never done any data stuff and it didn't take long to realize I'd been thrown into the deep end of the pool. The guys in the data center were a bunch of weasels that blamed any failure on teleprocessing. They knew no one could dispute them because no one knew anything about it.

It took about two months before I could talk intelligently about network issues and throw around IBM acronyms. My best day was when I was told there was a network failure and I proved it was a computer issue caused by the operators.

They never screwed with me again.

So CMGUY, Hang in there. You'll get up to speed will do well in your new job. Trust me on this.