Family Gatherings
I find this topic quite ironic given the fact that Breah, Sonya, Kathy, and I had just discussed family reunions yesterday coming back from lunch. Kathy stated she liked Breah's Carolina blue "Hoey Family Reunion" T-shirt. After some wordplay, Kathy said she wished she had a big black family so she could go to the family reunions. She even devised a plan to infiltrate a family reunion, which Breah quickly shot down. The conversation then digressed to why white people do not have family reunions, or better yet, why they did not advertise them on T-shirts. Crickets. None of us could come up with a rational explanation.
I used to work in group sales at a theme park during the summers. Here groups constituted 15 or more paid admissions (children two and under were admitted free and were not to included in the group total). As you might expect, Saturday was always our busiest day. Most of our business came from church groups, followed by family reunions. (Scout groups were usually the smallest percentage of our gate.)
One person was supposed to check in for the entire group, but inevitably, we would have a harried group leader with an entourage of well-opinionated relatives trying to figure out exactly how many people they actually had arrived with (and who still might be coming) and who had paid and who hadn't. Please have all money collected prior to coming to Group Sales. Usually, I would just keep the window open, allowing the cool breeze from the office to ease their frazzled nerves. Other times, if they were rude and beyond repair, I would just shut my window and tell them to knock when they had it all figured out.
Most of the people that I dealt with from family reunions were cordial. I was always amused by the families from far off and exotic places like Alabama who arrived in a good mood despite riding in a bus for four and a half hours with 50 + people that they may or may not really know. Some families weren't so lucky. By the time that they arrived at the park, they were bickering. There were even a couple of times that I thought might have to jump through my window to break up a fight. Thank goodness the park is 270 acres I would think after checking them in and shutting my window.
The worst thing was when someone arrived after the group had already purchased the tickets for the group. Only the group leader can purchase tickets for the group and it must be done in one transaction. We always figured that if they had a T-shirt, they were legit. But if you walked up and just said you were with a certain group, that was sketchy. They could have just seen the T-shirts. You would have to pay full price. I guess that is the true benefit of the family reunion T-shirt.
I used to work in group sales at a theme park during the summers. Here groups constituted 15 or more paid admissions (children two and under were admitted free and were not to included in the group total). As you might expect, Saturday was always our busiest day. Most of our business came from church groups, followed by family reunions. (Scout groups were usually the smallest percentage of our gate.)
One person was supposed to check in for the entire group, but inevitably, we would have a harried group leader with an entourage of well-opinionated relatives trying to figure out exactly how many people they actually had arrived with (and who still might be coming) and who had paid and who hadn't. Please have all money collected prior to coming to Group Sales. Usually, I would just keep the window open, allowing the cool breeze from the office to ease their frazzled nerves. Other times, if they were rude and beyond repair, I would just shut my window and tell them to knock when they had it all figured out.
Most of the people that I dealt with from family reunions were cordial. I was always amused by the families from far off and exotic places like Alabama who arrived in a good mood despite riding in a bus for four and a half hours with 50 + people that they may or may not really know. Some families weren't so lucky. By the time that they arrived at the park, they were bickering. There were even a couple of times that I thought might have to jump through my window to break up a fight. Thank goodness the park is 270 acres I would think after checking them in and shutting my window.
The worst thing was when someone arrived after the group had already purchased the tickets for the group. Only the group leader can purchase tickets for the group and it must be done in one transaction. We always figured that if they had a T-shirt, they were legit. But if you walked up and just said you were with a certain group, that was sketchy. They could have just seen the T-shirts. You would have to pay full price. I guess that is the true benefit of the family reunion T-shirt.
posted by eromler at
8:32 AM
2 Comments:
What's really, really funny is I used to buy Family Reunion shirts from Goodwill... the funnier the better.
By
Andrea, at 9:30 AM
This post makes me wish I'd been riding with y'all.
By
Donna Sewell, at 6:22 PM
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