Sunday, March 8, 2009

A Brain to Spare?

Tim and I took the kids bowling at a nearby bowling alley.  The place is pretty nice and is definitely targeted at an upscale market.  They have the kid lanes with sport side rails that prevent gutter balls and they have these metal ramps that the kids can roll the ball down to bowl.

When we got there, they asked Tim if she wanted to sign the kids up for their kids club.  Its really a pretty good deal that pretty much pays for itself after two games or so of bowling, so we agreed.

We bowled for a while and then some friends unexpectedly arrived and bowled at the lane next to us.  That was a nice surprise.  Adam was one of the boys who spent the night for Jacob's birthday party, and I'm friends with both parents.

I noticed as we were bowling that they were cleaning the lanes to our right with some machine the width of the lanes.  In the middle of my ninth frame, the guy puts the machine in our lane, and is about to clean it.  I look at Tim who asks the guy what he thinks he's doing (she asked in a nice way).  He says that he is cleaning the lane.  She points out that we are almost finished with a game.  He tells her that he always cleans the lanes at 5:00.  Well, she lets him know that he needs to wait.  So the guy ends putting away his cleaning machine.

Part of me was just flabbergasted.  This guy was going to interrupt our game, making us wait ten or more minutes while he cleaned the lane.  Another part of me was not even the smallest bit surprised.  Here I was bowling in the lane that this guy needed to clean.  Customers can be so inconvenient. 

My satisfaction in our small victory in being able to finish our game was short lived.  The unstated cost of the kids club was that you have to wait for twenty or thirty minutes while the less than stellar clerk tries to figure out how to ring you up.  I'm not sure if they were cleaning the cash register or the lady was just stupid, but in any case it took way too long.    

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