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So, I showed up for my 10 a.m. tour yesterday morning at 9:45. A few tourists arrived...and then so did another guide, a woman who was sure that she was to do the 10 a.m. tour. After some discussion, we agreed that she'd do the 10 a.m. tour and I'd go along with her until 10:45, then I'd run back down to the arcade and see if I was needed for the 11 a.m. tour.
So I watched this other guide give the tour, always an educational experience, and I was dismayed by how grim and joyless was her delivery. She may as well have been Joe Friday! I don't know why people do these things when it's manifestly the case that they can't make it entertaining.
I often tell people I'm the best of the Fox's 50+ tour guides. It's an idle boast, but at times like that one I wonder if it just might be true.
No other guide appeared, so I gave the 11 a.m. tour, and it was a mess. I only had fourteen tourists (one was from Australia; that was kind of cool), but the Fox staff was setting up for a wedding reception in the Grand Salon, the set for Les Miserables* was being built in the auditorium, the band for the same show was practicing in the Spanish Room, and the Lower Men's Lounge was closed for renovations.
Furthermore, one of my tourists yelled at the wedding videographer for talking too loudly in the Grand Salon, and another kept lagging behind the group, because taking her photographs was apparently sooo ding-dang important.
Then ... and this has never happened before! ... at the end of the tour we were trapped inside! The main doors to the arcade were locked as usual ... but we usually leave through the Spanish Room, which was closed for the rehearsal, and we couldn't cut through the Grand Salon because the reception had begun.
I had to leave my group in the lobby ("Make up stuff about the stuff you're looking at," I suggested) and dash around looking for a staff person to unlock the Ponce doors for me. I finally found one and got them out of there, about 10 minutes overtime.
The ten o'clock tours are vastly preferable, because the theater's much less busy at that time. If only that ditz hadn't gotten the time wrong ...
I hurried home after the tour and took another look at the schedule.
I was scheduled for the 11 o'clock after all. Sigh.
*Tom Swifty: "I have to read a book by Victor Hugo," said Les miserably.
Today's Faulkner Story: "Lo!"
So I watched this other guide give the tour, always an educational experience, and I was dismayed by how grim and joyless was her delivery. She may as well have been Joe Friday! I don't know why people do these things when it's manifestly the case that they can't make it entertaining.
I often tell people I'm the best of the Fox's 50+ tour guides. It's an idle boast, but at times like that one I wonder if it just might be true.
No other guide appeared, so I gave the 11 a.m. tour, and it was a mess. I only had fourteen tourists (one was from Australia; that was kind of cool), but the Fox staff was setting up for a wedding reception in the Grand Salon, the set for Les Miserables* was being built in the auditorium, the band for the same show was practicing in the Spanish Room, and the Lower Men's Lounge was closed for renovations.
Furthermore, one of my tourists yelled at the wedding videographer for talking too loudly in the Grand Salon, and another kept lagging behind the group, because taking her photographs was apparently sooo ding-dang important.
Then ... and this has never happened before! ... at the end of the tour we were trapped inside! The main doors to the arcade were locked as usual ... but we usually leave through the Spanish Room, which was closed for the rehearsal, and we couldn't cut through the Grand Salon because the reception had begun.
I had to leave my group in the lobby ("Make up stuff about the stuff you're looking at," I suggested) and dash around looking for a staff person to unlock the Ponce doors for me. I finally found one and got them out of there, about 10 minutes overtime.
The ten o'clock tours are vastly preferable, because the theater's much less busy at that time. If only that ditz hadn't gotten the time wrong ...
I hurried home after the tour and took another look at the schedule.
I was scheduled for the 11 o'clock after all. Sigh.
*Tom Swifty: "I have to read a book by Victor Hugo," said Les miserably.
Today's Faulkner Story: "Lo!"
